Sealed in the chamber, Jon was bathed with electric-blue light. The energy sent tingling sensations across his skin and then deeper, as tinges of pain began to shoot through his whole body. Suddenly he went numb. Blinded by the bright light and unable to feel the rest of his body, Jon felt himself floating.
He wasn't sure how long he'd stayed there, floating and alone and blissfully quiet. When darkness opened a window into his white blindness and he could see the lab beyond, members of his family staring back at him, he realised if couldn't have been more than a few minutes. He later learned he'd spent no longer than his sister in the tube, mere seconds.
The onlookers beckoned him out of the chamber and Jon did so. He counted four feet hitting the cold floor. Looking down, he saw his upper torso had remained unchanged but from his waist down, there was chestnut fur and the forelimbs of some large animal he didn't recognise, at least not from directly above.
Straining over his shoulder, he saw the chestnut-furred body of the animal extend out behind him. His ropey tail flapped idly at his bestial rear end.
His movement was slow but he figured he would get faster over time, once he became used to his centaur form. His new body felt heavy and clumsy, especially around his rear legs where a great weight hung unseen from his groin and dangled between his rear legs.
"What the hell am I?" Jon asked, nonplussed. "A horse? Or some kind of cattle?"
"Cattle, honey," his mother replied.
"So I'm like a bull, or a buffalo?"
"Not quite, dear. You're a cow."
"But then that weight I feel between my legs "
" is your udder," the tech finished his sentence for him, "and I must say, it looks rather full."
"But I'm a guy!"
"Only down to your waist, Jon," she replied. "After that, it's a different story. Our centaurs often end up crossing genders. It's a fifty-fifty chance, a coin flip."
"Please, you've got to fix this!"
The tech shook her head. "Sorry," she said. "Our policy is that scanner selections are unarguable; otherwise we'd have a whole retreat full of two or three popular species, and nothing else."
"You can handle this, dear," his mom said. "It's just for a couple of weeks, after all."
Jon wanted to argue further, but it was clear that that wasn't going to get him anywhere.
"Let's get you sorted out, Jon. Samantha, come in here please," the tech spoke through the intercom. A young woman whose legs had been replaced by the body of an enormous fruit bat entered shortly after.
"Samantha, can you give Jon here the tour of our milking lounge? Make him feel at home, would you?"
"Certainly," the fruit bat centaur girl replied and crawled over to Jon.
"What's a milking lounge?" Jon asked, nervous.
"Better than a milking shed, I can assure you," Samantha smiled. She gently took Jon by the hand and slowly led the cow centaur boy from the room, an enormous swollen udder swinging between his legs.
