Chapter five is finished, and currently available for all patrons supporting me at the $5 dollar level or higher! Chapter 4 will be released for everyone on Wednesday. I’m also going to start putting this one up on gay spiral stories as well, now that the shape of the story is a bit more apparent, and I’m confident it’ll come to some kind of ending. We’re about halfway through this one, I think, and sliding into act two. Thanks for reading!
Judging from some of the responses I’ve been getting, I think it would be good to take a little bit deeper of a look at the gay to straight trope. It’s…a messy and problematic thing, in all honesty, but that’s hardly new in the MC/TF genre, or really, any writing at all for that matter. But where some of the more questionable aspects of this genre get glossed over (like the fact that basically every story in the genre, my own included, are rape stories) this one struck a nerve, and for good reason I think, but I also feel that the trope itself can be, well, reclaimed isn’t the right word exactly, but I think that it has thematic value. I think it has important questions–about what it means to be gay, about the society we live in, about how we survive, about masculinity and femininity. So let’s try to set some boundaries first, figure out where so many of these stories have gone wrong.
A big part of the problem is that so many of these stories aren’t just gay to straight stories, they are gay to “straight homophobe” stories. Some of these are, well, hard to read. No, they’re more than hard to read, they aren’t even worth reading, to be honest. I don’t doubt that some people find them enjoyable and erotic, in the same way that gay skinhead/nazi porn is erotic for some people, but, well, there’s a similarity there, don’t you think? It’s an eroticism of rejection and division. A lot of people have said that the gay to straight homophobe stories are born of internalized homophobia, and I think there’s truth to that–but there’s more to it than that as well. This isn’t just self-hatred–this hatred extends beyond the self. It seeks to divide the self away from the “faggots” the “queers” the “etc.” It isn’t just hatred–it’s denial.
I, of course, wrote a few of those stories, using homophobic themes, but they were, well…I tried to pull from something else. For my own interactive story, I tried to build that homophobia in as a curse, have it warped back around onto the straight men themselves. For the little addition I made over on CYOC, it was became less about gay guys becoming homophobes, and more about two gay men trying to find a way to survive and change within rules that wouldn’t let them be who they wanted–it was about trying to find a way to be happy in an impossible situation. Do they work? I can’t really judge that, that’s up to readers I think. Internalized homophobia is real. Conversion therapy is real. Heteronormativity is real. These things hurt people, in real life, every dang day. I don’t want to add to that hurt, but it is clear that a lot of authors don’t care if they hurt people or not. That, to me, is the real crux of it. Some of these stories are designed to hurt people, to make them feel bad about who they are–that’s what I want to avoid. Hopefully I’ll manage.
But here is something else I also feel–that the gay to straight trope is a whole lot larger than just gay guy becomes a raging homophobe. Every ‘twink to bear’ story relies on the ‘gay to straight’ trope, because honestly? In a lot of ways, being a good bear is about being able to pass as a man–as a straight man. Our look is stolen from straight archetypes (the biker, the cop, the lumberjack) and has a real hard time grappling with femininity. Of course, a lot of bears like to subvert those expectations–and they should! This is a good thing!–but I know I could talk to any bear about it, and the ability to not be recognized on sight as gay is, well, it’s can be a relief. I have never once in my life been catcalled or verbally harassed in public. I have no real doubt that the reason for this, is because I’m six foot, 260 pounds, with a big beard, looking like I probably have a wife and at least two kids. Being a bear is a way of being safe, in this heternormative society, and this is something we don’t talk about nearly enough.
To me, the gay to straight trope is at it’s core about corruption, as I mentioned in my last piece. It’s about flipping the usual script, about rendering the gay as purity, and straightness as corruption. It presents straightness not as a norm, but as a horror that is inflicted on innocence. We find the good ones satisfying not because we want to be straight ourselves, but for the same reason we feel catharsis after a horror film–that the people who just suffered weren’t me, that I am safe. But it should also be a discussion about who gets to be safe, and what the cost of that safety is. That’s the part that hurts the most, to me, about the gay to homophobe stories–the subject gets to become safe–invulnerable really, to the heternormative society they exist in, but the price of that is that they become a danger to every still gay man around them.
So what would you do, if you could be safe? Would you grow a beard, and put on weight? Would you drive a pickup truck? Would you tell strangers that you’re married, but leave the gender of that marriage neutral? Would you buy a house, move to the suburbs, adopt children, blend into the white picket fences? Would you laugh at jokes that make you hurt? Would you assault someone you once loved? Join fascists, and beat a black man so they don’t beat you yet? Would you kill yourself, or a version of yourself? We do these things every day, all of us. We make ourselves straight, in the smallest or largest of ways, in exchange for safety in this society that would, honestly, happily see us dead. I want this story to make you question what choices you make, each day, so you can be safe–goodness knows, I make them every day, and I know you all do too. Are they the right choices? Are we willing to hurt others so that we can get safety ourselves? I don’t know if a right answer exists to any of these, beyond dismantling the very system that makes us all feel so unsafe to begin with–but this isn’t really that story. This story is about survival, and what we do to survive, in the face of this straight terror.
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Jimmy found his way to the new lab, still trying to shake off what he had seen in lab #76, when he’d arrived at his new home, now that his prior project was being reclassified. The massive blob, the sense that it had somehow been a person–it had to have been a person, right? And that other, smaller one, which was…more of a person, but no longer one entirely. The fact that he knew, right now, those things were being kept alive, and not being sent to the incinerator–it made him want to run screaming from the complex–but he knew, if he did, he’d be in violation of his NDA, and executed. Now he understood why security here was so tight–the science happening here…shouldn’t be happening here. But he was too deep now–what did it matter? He got to the new lab, entered, and found a researcher waiting for him, excited to give him the breakdown of what they were working on here, in lab #146. Jimmy hoped it would be more sane–but he was unsurprised to find this project just as ethically nightmarish as the last.
It had started as a simple question–could memories be converted into chemical form, such that they could be replicated, and spread between people? The answer, it turned out, was yes–though it has been years for the project to advance to this level, and the researcher skipped over, well, a good amount of history, and he was sure, a good amount of mistakes as well. This lab, he had noticed, was more tightly controlled than the last–though apparently the last one had not been controlled enough. Getting in was easy–of course, but getting out again required, well, he saw another researcher leave, after his shift, and it took a while–blood and sweat samples, questions about key memories, a thorough chemical scrub. The researcher told him, when he asked about it, that most of them slept in the bunks here, within the containment area–they only left when really necessary.
The reason for such tight controls was this–building on some other work, they were able to discover the neurological sequencing of memories–how to build them, really. It was relatively easy, in fact–if you realigned some of the subjects neurons to the proper path, the subject would create a memory to match them on their own–with minimal effort required on the researcher’s part. But there were two wrinkles. First, the mind seemed…incapable of making a new memory without also warping the body itself–and the larger the memory, the more the body would warp. If you made someone believe that they had been a boxer in college, and they remembered losing a tooth, that tooth would fall out of their head–and they would be more muscular, and scar tissue would develop, and, and, and. No one understood how it happened–it should be impossible, but, well, it wasn’t.
But the bigger problem was the fact that the only carrier they had managed to find to deliver these memories to the brain, was viral–a heavily warped virus that would force the neurons into their new alignment–but what that meant, was the state was…contagious. The individuals would become enslaved to the virus’ need to replicate and spread–and the body would change in a few key ways. This virus was…sexually transmitted, and so, the subject would become incredibly horny, and sexually flexible. The subject’s body would also emit a pheromone, which smelled like–in the words of those who had caught wind of it and escaped contamination–liquid sex.
Jimmy found all of this, well, hard to believe. But the videos showing previous memory injections were, well, convincing. The researcher told him that, at this point, the study was two pronged. The most important part, was trying to reduce the virality of the injections, or at least find a way to reduce it and turn it off. If they could do that, the military and civilian options were obvious–a way to give a recruit boot camp in one shot, both mentally and physically. A way to rehabilitate prisoners and criminals in moments. But with the viral component lessened, the serum could also become a potent biological weapon, warping a whole cell of terrorists into something harmless over a matter of weeks.
So Jimmy was put to work. He decided to sleep in the lab, rather than deal with the trial of leaving the quarantine area. Mostly, he was working on trying to isolate the viral component of the virus, without rendering it less effective, but as with all things, violating the natural order of things, in was only so long before something went wrong–and that wrong thing, was this. Jimmy was in the storage vault. Here, all of the memories that had been sequenced were stored–some of them waiting to be tested, some of them from prior experiments, trying to understand how the serums even functioned. Even these old vials couldn’t be destroyed–it was worried that fire and incineration wouldn’t be able to deal with this virus–since nothing else seemed to destroy it easily. So here they were kept–and mostly well maintained, but one of them had been sealed inappropriately, and Jimmy had been lax with his PPE, and inhaled some of the serum on the air.
Injection was fastest, taking hold in minutes. Sexual intercorse required an hour or two. Inhalation also worked, but took six to eight hours to incubate. Jimmy continued his work, but began to feel a bit woozy–it was just about the end of his shift, though, and so he went into the bunk room to lay down for a rest. He was asleep almost immediately–and he dreamed–and the dream was so much more vivid than should have been possible…because it was a memory, too. He was in boot camp–that much he knew. He had been…recruited? Or had be volunteered? The memory was corrupted, and old, and there were so many gaps to fill, so many…things he needed to remember. What sort of memory does he recall?
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“Straight Town” is far enough out of my usual sort of writing (kind of) and far enough out of my own comfort zone, to be honest, that I’ve been wanting to write some companion pieces giving a bit of context to it along the way. These are going to be a bit rough, and a bit rambling–they are honestly just as much about me trying to clarify my own thinking to myself, as much as they are about trying to clarify the story to all of you. I have some topics that I want to touch on–looking at the eroticism in the emerging “gay to straight” trope which is popular right now; talking about how I relate the setting of Straight Town to other settings of mine, especially Pigtown and City of Bears; a discussion of generation trauma,and how I see this story unfolding itself, and as a potential anthology; my own discomforts here, especially regarding children and the act of breeding. All that said, I do also want to address your questions too–if you have them. If there’s something you’d be interested in having me comment on, you can use my curious cat to leave an anonymous question, or leave a comment below. I might not find every question answerable, but they will probably open up ideas I myself hadn’t even thought about talking about.
This story started out as a commission. It is no longer a commission–it took on a life of its own, and the original commissioner was kind enough to let me ride it out and see where it goes. The initial request was for a story to satisfy something he calls a “breeder fetish”–a twist on an age progression story, where in addition to aging up, you also find yourself with children, a wife, a family, a new reality around you, which functions mostly as a prison, in essence. It’s about struggling to come to terms with a new life you would have never chosen for yourself, and trying to accept a new life, and a new reality, that you never wanted. From there, we batted the idea back and forth for a number of months, as I tried to create a situation that would satisfy my own desires for my stories, with his fetishes. The premise of “Straight Town” is what eventually stuck with me.
It is a town which, in many ways, is the shadow world of “City of Bears”. CofB is urban and suburban, while this is rural. CoB asks the question of what a gay bear society might possibly look like, while this story examines a society where breeding is the sole drive of every individual. They both have patriarchs and instigators–Tristian and Roger respectively–both of them also similar to Rod, from my Pigtown stories. None of them are characters truly, but rather the rules and drives of the settings given power and agency. Straight Town is a world that is about hiding, and stealth and passing. It is a world about survival, where CoB is about flexibility and change and personal identity. CofB is the dream, and Straight Town is, in many ways, the nightmare. Because of that, this has been one of the hardest stories for me to write and conceptualize, mostly because it took ages for me to understand how I could possibly take something that terrifies me, and twist it around into something erotic.
I don’t really know if I’ll succeed. I don’t really know if I want this to be a story you jack off you at all. Part of me wants it to be a story you jack off to, and then sit there wondering why in the world you just jacked off to that. I have used a term in the past called anti-porn, which I define as a story which possessed all of the characteristics of porn, including the eroticism, but one which is also deeply unsettling. A story that makes you question your own understanding of your fantasies. Do we want to be Steve or Kevin? Do we want to be Roger? Is it our own relief that we could never be any of them, what really satisfies us? I think the answer is different for everyone, most likely. There is, without a doubt, something deeply erotic about the “gay to straight” trope which has seen a resurgance of popularity recently, and that is something I am still struggling to understand myself.
I have written a few things with this trope so far–some interactive chapters over on CYOC, and an interactive story, most prominently. All of them feature gay sex, which makes me wonder if they even really count in the genre itself, but I have certainly lost a number of loads over those, and other stories using the trope by other authors, though the reason why I find the stories alluring is slippery. I enjoy the taboo of it, in the way I enjoy all taboos–pushing yourself to enjoy something that you know, rationally, you ought to shun (like scat, gore, snuff etc). I enjoy the characters and the transformations as well, because the outcomes, straight or not, are often my kind of sexy. There is something else though, I think, that thrills me more about them–that in these stories, straightness is read as corruption. It is straightness which is wrong, detested, avoided and resisted. For once, we see gayness as purity–as the way things ought to be.
In heternormative society, gayness is a flaw at best, and a contagion at worst. To the heteroworld, we might be accepted, but we are never understood as something that can be pure. There will always be something wrong, or broken inside of us, which has made us gay–whether it is biology, or nurture, or Satan, or whatever else they are coming up with these days. Heteronormative society will accept us so long as we do our very best to scrub those flaws out of ourselves, to adhere to the hetero standards of behavior, sex and gender that they demand, that they consider to be pure, as though there is a belief that, inside us all somewhere is a perfect straight man or woman (and certainly nothing outside the bianary) and our goal ought to be to strive towards that “perfection” at all cost.
But these stories are not written as purification tales. Gayness is never removed from someone–instead, straightness is added to them. Characters don’t become a “straight” version of themselves, instead they become a straight caricature–the jock bro, the gamer loser, the raging christian conservative, the ignorant redneck. Of course none of these stereotypes exist, just as these is no such thing as the perfect himbo, the leather slave, the muscle daddy bear. But while we watch these gay men corrupted–for once we get to place outselves in a position of purity. There is a real moment of catharsis here–a belief, for once, that we are the ones who were right all along.
I want “Straight Town” to feel strange. I want the presence of children to feel alien. I want this town to feel like corruption. In a horror movie, at the end, the most cathartic realization is that, despite the horror you just witnessed, you are still alive. You are safe. Straightness, like ghosts, and demons, and zombies, was never really real at all–just a story we tell each other to scare ourselves in the night.
What 86-X9 didn’t know, was that the amount of radiation he had just bombarded Todd with far exceded the usual dosage given to the embryos in the study. Enough that, by the time Todd was forced into the temporal chamber, he was already starting to feel a bit sick, like something inside him had changed, but he had no idea what, or even how to describe the sensation. He only had a moment to think about it, however, before 86-X9 flipped the switch, and time started going faster.
Inside the chamber, one year progressed at a rate of around 10 seconds. Twenty years could pass in just a little over three minutes–but for the first chunk of time, not much happened–Todd could feel the cells of his body screaming–not only from their new mutations, but also from the sudden acceleration of their own life cycle. He fell to the ground, clutching himself, curled up–and 86-X9 noticed too late that the first change was beginning to manifest. Todd was growing.
It wasn’t a neat or organized growth–more like every part of his body was suddenly obsessed with becoming thicker. His fat and muscle tissues began to reproduce even faster, his body becoming more and more blob like, bones snapping and then being eaten up by the rest of his tissues, trying to do anything to keep growing as large as he could. In a minute, Todd no longer even had a human silhouette–he was just a towering blob of human flesh, easily nine feet tall, his arms and legs no longer recognizable among the other fatty limbs and cysts his out of control cells had just produced. But something else was happening now, as the mass replication slowed down. The new cells began to reorder themselves, changing and adapting to their new positions, and the cysts and limbs began to lengthen into long tentacles, all of them tipped with a fleshy head, leaking a viscous slime onto the floor. That same slime was leaking from new pores erupting all over Todd’s body, coating him in it, sliding onto the floor around him. New mouths and eyes opened up all over the body’s mass as well. The mouths had no teeth, but instead massive, gripping tongues large enough to wrap around a man and drag him into it’s flesh depths–but that wasn’t what this thing wanted. It wasn’t hungry, it was…horny–or at least, that was the last thought Todd had before his mind was fragmented apart by the new mutated creature that had grown from his body.
The field died, and 86-X9 just stared at the mass of flesh in the room, horrified at what had just happened. Still, while…extreme, it was good enough for his plan–even better, since nothing about it was even recognizable as Todd any more. He stepped into the chamber, and realized too late that the thing no longer had enough of a mind for him to try and control–and then the beast was upon him, tentacles wrapped around his arms and legs, his last act sealing the door of the chamber before the thing could escape.
He smelled something…burning, and saw that the slime was eating away his clothes–and began to fear it would eat him away as well, but when the slime touched him, instead all he felt was a cooling tingle–and he relaxed. It felt like his whole body just turned off, and the thing wrapped him tighter, feeling him, testing his holes, before sliding one tentacle down into 86-X9’s guts from his mouth, another one sliding into his ass, and the slime leaking from them began to inflate 86-X9’s body, bloating it full of it’s fluid, and when it was nearly bursting, it set him down in a corner, slime drooling from 86-X9’s ruined mouth and ass, his eyes dead, but clearly something was still alive, because his body would occasionally twitch and lurch.
When the scientists returned the next morning, they were horrified. There, in the temporal chamber, was a beast the likes of which they had never seen, casing the perimeter, obviously looking for a way out, but too simple to find one. In the corner of the room was something still recognizable as human, but the fluid was eating away it’s bones, and beginning the same rapid replication as before, growing large cysts, it’s body already doubled in size overnight.
The project was officially closed, and a new one begun to study these strange creatures under tighter controls, and the interns on the project were sent back to the bunks, traumatized and horrified at what they’d seen, not even realizing that they were missing one of their own too. One of them, Jimmy, was assigned to a new project that very afternoon, but what was it working on?
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Todd had no idea what to expect, precisely. He knew that the research happening at Xigen Labs was cutting edge and wasn’t confined to one discipline, but not in his wildest dreams, could he image that he would witness something like this. The first day was devoted to onboarding with the study, signing a mountain of NDAs and liability waivers, and only then, towards the afternoon, did they get to sit down with one of the assistant researchers on the project, and learn what all of this study was about. It started with a basic rundown of genetics and evolution, some of the difficulties in studying evolving biology over generations, and then it descended into a who new set of science he had no background in. The assistant began talking about temporal vacuums, acceleration intervals–thankfully, Todd wasn’t the only one who was confused, and another intern finally raised their hand, timidly, asking the researcher to clarify what he was talking about.
It was hard to believe, but what the researchers were doing, somehow, was accelerating time–biologically–causing the beings in their study to age much more rapidly inside the field than they ever would outside of it. At last, it clicked for Todd–they were essentially brute-force hacking evolution. They would take embryos, bombard them with radiation designed to cause mutations, and then accelerate them. If the resulting sample was of interest to them for genetic research, it would be saved–and perhaps used for breeding. If it wasn’t…it would be accelerated towards its natural death in the temporal field. The interns were all silent, as they let that sink in–not only the nature of the science, but ethical quandary itself–but it wasn’t until they saw the subjects that they nearly all let out a gasp–the subjects of the study weren’t the usual mice or even monkeys–it was a human trial.
The researcher noted their surprise and shock with a rather disinterested look, and then kept talking, describing how the study had already found several promising advancements in medical gene therapies, that the subjects–due to the temporal field–rarely developed any real sense of self, and that the embryos they were using had all been slated to be destroyed anyway. Still, that wasn’t enough for some of them, and several interns asked to be dismissed and reassigned. The researcher reminded them all of the NDA, but allowed them to leave–until only Todd and two other interns remained, and the researcher smiled for the first time. “We only needed three anyway,” he said with a laugh, and continued the tour. They saw the temporal field in action, watched infants become children become adults in a matter of moments, the researchers investigating the resulting mature specimens for any interesting mutations, before sending them back into the field to age, and die.
Todd just watched it–fascinated. He’d had no idea something like this was even possible. This was science without limits; who knew what we were capable of doing down here? After that, they moved into what the researcher called “the menagerie”. The cells lining the walls were full of the most promising subjects whose mutations were most likely to yield further developments. Some of them had spawned entire new research projects themselves. Ethical quandaries aside–the possibilities were impressive. At the end of the afternoon, the three interns, Todd included, were assigned to different aspects of the project, and got to work. Things proceeded well for a few days–until something went wrong. It started with subject 86-X9.
86-X9 was a marvel of the program, a genetic jackpot. Human in appearance, his mind was capable of processing massive amounts of data in a relatively short time. The temporal field didn’t accelerate cognition–so most of the subjects never developed a mind beyond that of an infant, but 86-X9 was different. Within hours, he had begun to understand English, and could speak it by the next day. Within a week, he had learned ten languages. He was most likely smarter than the entire staff put together, and posed real danger, and so was kept isolated and confined in the deepest part of the lab. But 86-X9 was only beginning to understand his own powers, and it was on this day, that he decided to give them a test drive.
Todd heard the voice in his head, and at first, assumed it was his own. The work he had been assigned was relatively boring–sorting out data from the temporal field for research into physics–but the louder it got in his mind…the more he was certain that something was trying to talk to him. Something…wanted him to go somewhere, but where? Deeper into the lab, he realized, into the menagerie…but deeper. He knew he shouldn’t–he didn’t have authorization–but the voice…was insistent. He stole a key card at the end of the day, slipped inside, and then deeper, into the vault–where he found 86-X9. He looked like a normal person, sitting in a small cell, but Todd knew he was different. Important. The most important. This close, the voice in his mind was so loud, that it was all he could hear–his own mind was shutting down, and 86-X9’s will was all that mattered. Still, this would for, for 86-X9’s escape plan, he hoped–he was going to be taking Todd’s place, and Todd, in turn, was going to be entering the menagerie as a subject.
86-X9 and Todd went to the radiation chamber. 86-X9 would have an easy enough job warping the minds around him to believe he had been Todd all along, and with access to the intern’d mind, he knew all of his deepest secrets. The problem was that there had to be a subject take his place–and for that, Todd was going to have to change. He stepped into the radiation chamber, and 86-X9 bombarded him with a sufficient amount to trigger mutations, and then led Todd to the temporal field–give his body an additional 20 years, and the mutations would develop just fine. What sort of mutations does Todd get?
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“Welcome to Xigen Labs, Todd. This compound is going to be your home for the next six months,” Kathy said, “As you know, the research we are conducting here is of the most sensitive nature. Only a select few students ever see the inside of this facility, where we conduct some of our most cutting edge research into the future of humanity. This is the sort of internship which can open all sorts of doors for you, as long as you perform well.”
The speech sounded a bit canned to Todd, who was more interested in trying to sort out what was happening in the labs he was passing by, but most of the windows were heavily tinted–most likely to avoid the exact thing he was trying to do. Xigen was one of the largest corporations in the world, and it seemed to have its fingers in everything. The founders advancements in geo-engineering were already looking to halt climate change within ten years, and perhaps even reverse it by the end of the century–but that hadn’t been enough for Doctor William Markos. Soon Xigen was on just about everything, and anyone who was anyone in scientific research, no matter the discipline, was sucked up into one of Markos’ labs or think tanks, like this one. “So when will I get to meet Dr. Markos?” Todd asked.
The administrator ignored his question, and continued with her introduction. “You will be staying with the other interns at this facility, and all of you will be shared by the various researchers in this compound. If a researcher feels like you are a good match to his study, you will likely be assigned to him permanently, and will then bunk with that research team. This is generally what happens over the course of your time here. As promised, Dr. Markos meets at least once with each intern over the course of the summer, but it isn’t clear on his schedule when he will be visiting this facility.”
They continued walking, and she continued talking about the various aspects of the facility, showing him to the cafeteria, recreational areas, and finally, to the bunk room for interns. It was…larger than Todd expected it to be, probably the size of half a football field, and filled with bunk beds–it looked more like a military barracks, than lodging at one of the most prestigious and cutting edge research centers in the world. There were a substantial number of other people there–all of them men, all around his same age. The administrator mentioned that the women’s internship quarters were nearby–and he realized that this must only be half of them, in all. How exclusive could this internship really be, if there were going to be hundreds of them here? The woman showed him to his bunk, his excitement at being such a select candidate dissipating a bit, and then she left–likely to introduce another candidate to the same speech.
Looking around, as he unpacked, everyone had the same dour look of slight disappointment on their face, but as they began talking, they soon realized that their pedigrees were all similarly impressive. Most of them had published research of their own by this point, in a variety of fields. Todd ever recognized several other men there from various conferences he’d attended, both as an undergraduate, and as a graduate student. The first day of work was set for tomorrow, so they spent their time in the cafeteria, getting dinner, and then in the recreational areas, before going to bed for the evening–every bunk full. Lying there, he felt more like a sardine, or a lab rat, than a member of an exclusive research internship. Hopefully that would change tomorrow, when he received his first assignment.
It was after breakfast, and the interns were all brought to a single, massive room, where they were to receive their first–and possibly only–assignments. There were a number of tables, sorted alphabetically, and Todd got in his line, and received his assignment–Lab #76, whatever that meant. He was given directions, told not to worry about bringing anything but himself–the lab had all of the necessary equipment already–and so he followed the swarm of other interns who had also gotten their assignment, and headed for the labs.
Lab #76 was buried pretty deep in the complex, and so by the time he got there, there were few people still walking with him. He used his keycard on the door, and it slid open for him–inside, he saw a couple of researchers in coats–most likely assistants, and three other interns dressed like him–all waiting for an explanation. The assistants told him there were five interns in all, and so they waited for the fifth, when they would be briefed on the research they would be conducting. At last, the fifth arrived–and the assistants started their explanation of the project.
Alright, so here’s how this interactive is going to work! The interns at this facility don’t realize that they are, essentially, cannon fodder for some of the strangest experiments that Xigen labs are conducting. As such, not all of them will stay as interns–more than a few will likely end up as test subjects! Only the best, brightest, and cleverest will make it through the six months, and have the opportunity to become researchers themselves. Below are a selection of key words–choose the ones that interest you, and I’ll combine the ones that people like into a “research study”, and we’ll see how Todd does. He may or may not come out of it unscathed–if not, we’ll follow another intern instead! I’d like to work through a few different studies, until it feels a bit stale. Below is the public poll, and the bonus Patreon poll can be found over here!
Chapter two of “Straight Town” is available over on my Patreon for supporters! If you support me at the five dollar level or higher, you can go ahead and check it out here. If you don’t support me yet, you’ll get access to it in a week!
Bracken's Corner 