Chapter 1: The Beginning (Mort)

When I think back to how my previous life ended, I find it amazing that my prior existence lasted so long, and that I mourned its loss at all, knowing what I know now.

In many ways, going through MORFS, and becoming someone else was the best thing to happen to me, even though my birth into my new life was a painful and frightening one. I often wonder if I had been given the choice, knowing where it would lead, and the cost associated with it, would I have chosen to become this new person. Impossible to say.

My name is, or should I say, was, Mortimer Wilson and I was a 15 years old boy. Yes I know, not exactly the best name to be saddled with. Then again at least I didn't get any obscure middle names that I would need to hide. Most people called me Mort (which I didn't mind), or Morty (which I hated even more than my full name).

I lived in a relatively large village, called Little Greenvale, that borders the sprawling conurbation of Oxford.

Given the rate of expansion, and desire of people to live close to the tech centres along the Thames, I have no doubt it will be subsumed one of these days, but so far, that has been prevented, thanks, in no small part, to the large proportion of local politicians and upper class types who live in the area, calling in various favours.

It is a place where the old values still rule, and prominent land owners still lord it over the common man. It is a place of strong Christian values, and a part of the world that has remained fairly unchanged for the better part of a hundred years. It is also a place where they do not look kindly on people changed by MORFS, especially those unfortunate enough to be hybrids.

My family had a great deal to do with this. My father, Grant Wilson, is a local landowner and farmer. He prides himself on (as he puts it) his "moral purity". No one in the family has openly undergone MORFS. There have been instances of family members suddenly up and vanishing to live abroad, (or any of a dozen excuses and euphemisms, which at the time I didn't recognise but now understand better) but they are fairly few and far between. Mostly limited to people who married into the family.

My father is a tough man, who speaks his mind, and expects to be obeyed. He has little time for the opinions of anyone else. The only man he listens to is his older brother Richard, or Reverend Wilson. He runs the local church, and oversees his parish's spiritual well-being with an iron fist. He is of the fire and brimstone school of preaching. In his lengthy Sunday sermons, he expounds hatred of those who have been afflicted with MORFS, attributing their change to unchristian living. He also advocates the public shunning of these individuals, labelling them demons who have possessed the souls of the living.

Their efforts to make Little Greenvale a haven against the unclean individuals changed by MORFS have been quite successful, attracting a large number of like-minded individuals, who have taken up roles in the community from local law enforcement, to running the local businesses, to staffing local schools, and even the local politicians. This has made the village a very closed community, and very unfriendly to those who have obviously undergone MORFS.

While laws supposedly prevent discrimination, on the few occasions that locals have changed as a result of MORFS, or people have tried to move to the area who were affected, they have been given steadily increasing and unpleasant incentives to move elsewhere. When all the local authorities are allied against, you making a complaint about harassment does little good.

So growing up in such an environment, you can understand why I might have a somewhat twisted view of people who had been changed by MORFS. Not all people in the village felt that way, but anyone who publicly expressed an opinion contrary to the line taken by the ruling elite, was given almost the same treatment as someone afflicted by MORFS, so most kept quiet.

I have a brother, and a sister, both older than me. My brother, Grant Junior, is very much his father's son, a real chip off the old block. He and I don't get along. He is everything I am not, strong and athletic, captain of the local rugby team, and reasonably good at school (enough to get by, at any rate). He is also a bully, and extremely arrogant. He makes my life hell, his dominance of me is something Father seems to find amusing.

My sister Gwen is the only member of my family I like. She is a good deal older than me, at 19, but we get on quite well. She some how manages to stand outside the usual family pecking order, even defying father, if not openly. Despite repeated attempts by my Father and Mother to marry her off into a good family, she has remained free of such entanglements, and is planning to go to university as soon as she can earn enough money to pay for her tuition fees. (Since father refused to waste money on sending a daughter to college when she should be married, yet another attitude of fathers anchored in the dark ages). She is a very beautiful young lady, not just because of her good looks, but for her warm loving heart. The family tolerates her, mainly because they believe she will come around once she settles down.

The rest of my family is just as bad as Father. My mother, Mary Wilson, is a member of the women's group for village happiness and well being. Ostensibly a social group, they are really another side of the control over the village. They organise all the social events, and act as a rudimentary spy network, gossiping and exposing any local secrets. On more than one occasion, it has been this group who outed those who tried to keep their affliction with MORFS a secret, even occasionally outing people who had never undergone any changes simply out of spite, or some affront to their collective control.

I am the youngest member of the family, and a constant disappointment to the bulk of the family. I was scrawny, standing a mere 5'3", and useless at any kind of sport. I preferred a nice quiet read, instead of rushing about a muddy field in the freezing cold with an inflated pigs bladder. I was not hideous at school work, but by no means exceptional. As a result, I was treated at best, as invisible, at worse a disappointment.

That changed one Friday in October 2035, it was turning autumn the leaves were beginning to fall and the nights were drawing in. I was on my way back from school. It was now out for a week, due to an anti-MORFS protest all the local big-wigs were going to, and local children were expected to attend as well, for moral fibre. I was a bit unhappy at the closure, for two reasons. One was the reason behind the closure, and the other was the fact that I had actually been enjoying school for once. We had been studying animals, and some children had even brought in exotic pets to show. Since the local school was run by the village in a pseudo private manner, such closures happened quite frequently. The head teacher, Mr Thomas, had been fired from a prominent position at a private school for his refusal to teach students who had undergone MORFS, so teaching at little Greenvale was something of a dream job for him. As such, he had no problem with closing the school for such events.

I hated such events, though mainly due to the requirement to spend hours marching to protest in my parent's and brother's company (my sister always finding some way of being elsewhere those days). Protesting against people with MORFS, and any laws to help, them didn't really bother me then. I had been conditioned practically from birth to think that people who had been changed by MORFS were evil monsters.