I work from home as a freelance graphic designer. I'm not an overly sociable type, but I get my people time in by volunteering at an animal shelter. I love animals, and I get to hang out with some generally altruistic people, so it scratches an itch on a hide that is otherwise utterly uninterested in people.
One day, everything suddenly became extraordinarily exciting at the shelter, and the actual military arrived, came inside and spoke to the shelter owner.
Black unmarked vehicles lined the sidewalk outside, and a battalion of Agent Smiths stood around outside, shades on, earpieces in and hands twitching.
The rest of us; a hippy type dude, a couple of bookish college girls and a kindly middle aged woman distractedly continued with our chores until the owner finally emerged, wearing the face of disbelief.
She took us all to one side, and, under the watchful eye of a couple of Agent Smiths, explained the impossible;
The Government had been experimenting with human-animal hybrids to fulfill certain societal tasks, mostly work related. The idea being to have creatures with humanlike dexterity and learning ability for manual labor and such but without the troublesome intelligence and such of proper humans.
However, the experiment had been an utter failure; the creatures were utterly useless compared to human workers, and in attempting to end the program, information had leaked to the media and was due to be announced that night.
Unable to cover this up and, as they put it; "liquidate their assets" footage had been caught by undercover reporters.
So, the government had decided to use animal shelters like ours as a publicity stunt, to "adopt" these hybrids.
So, the truck came to our rear door, and in were brought a series of containers, with bizarre noises coming from them. We were told that as volunteers, we would be shown these creatures first, and offered the chance to adopt if we so wished, with an undisclosed financial "incentive."
We were interviewed by one of the scientists; lifestyle, income, health, blah blah blah, and he determined that as a vaguely antisocial thirty-something guy in good physical health with a good work-from-home income I would be best suited to adopt the creature that required the most care.
They led me to its container.
Nothing prepared me for what I saw.
"Homo Porcine" the scientist said aloud as the container opened.
In the container on a bundle of bedding was an unholy combination of pig and human woman.
It looked up at me from its bedding and yawned, it's not-quite human eyes meeting mine, and I could tell I was looking into the eyes of something more animal than human.
It -sorry, I'll call her she- was petite, probably five-two-ish standing, and chubby-bodied. She was utterly naked, as they clearly didn't see her as human enough to require clothing.
She had long, unkempt blonde hair, blue eyes, but her face was as pig-like as it was human; humanlike lips, but a rounder face with a thick snout. Her ears were those of a pig, sitting atop her head, poking through her hair. At the base of her spine was a curly pig's tail.
The scientist spoke without my prompting; "this asset was intended for care work. Pigs are very tough, and also very caring animals, and female humans have the greatest empathy. This asset would have been trained to care for sick and elderly people.
It is a very clean creature, it is toilet trained, but we just couldn't balance its intelligence to make it capable of caring for others without having human autonomy.
So, what do you say?"
I gazed at this creature for a while, still struggling to process the sight of her, so utterly alien was she.
"So what do you say?" the scientist repeated after a beat.
I was shocked out of my reverie, and turned to the scientist.
"I don't know, man, this is a crazy big commitment."
The scientist took a chequebook from his coat and showed me a stupid number of zeroes.
"Take the next few months off work. Make the adjustments you need to, for yourself, and the asset. Treat yourself with the rest. I have no doubt in my mind that you are the right person to care for Homo Porcine.
You live alone, and will do so for the rest of your life, and you are happy for that to be the case. You can accommodate the asset, and she will provide you with what little domestic companionship you require. You rarely date and you never let them come to your house, breaking things off when things get too serious. You have a very stable ego, preferring to remain anonymous and low-profile online. You have zero desire for fame or attention of any kind."
"You guys really do know everything." I commented irritatedly.
"We thoroughly researched the volunteers here before we arrived. We had to choose our adopters carefully." the scientist chuckled.
The zeroes on the cheque swimming around my head, I turned to look back at the creature.
She arrived at my house the next day, myself being one of the "anonymous adopters whose identity must remain confidential" that the news had mentioned the previous night.
Delivered in a crate by a team of Agent Smiths disguised as a household appliance company, they let her out into my living room. She surprised me by crawling on all fours. It looked like she could barely walk on two feet.
