"Nothing to Prove" by Kortnee Bryant

It was the fashion, that year, to have a tail.  Great breakthroughs had been made it medicine, allowing for almost completely natural bone, cartilage and muscle replacements when somebody decided to use them for cosmetic enhancements.  Oh, I remember begging my mother for my first pair of earrings, being slightly intrigued at the thought of whisker implants and sighing wistfully over the cost of tattoo spots.

When the announcement was first made that it could be done, there was outrage.  Everybody blamed somebody for society’s moral decline.  Legislation was started to ban the procedures but it didn’t get very far.  People were forbidden, and people were encouraged, to strike a blow at the “opposition.”

I wondered if anybody had simply said it was a bad idea.  Had anybody asked the young dilettantes who had nothing left to do if they had considered what they would look like in 20 years?  Of course not.  This was, after all, my generation mutilating their bodies.  We knew, really, that we looked ridiculous.  But then, we never considered the fact that we would live past 30.  Our parents were in superb health, and it was likely to stay that way what with all the new medical breakthroughs.  Some of us even had children.  The mandatory state regulated child care took most of that responsibility away from us, though, so we were left to our own devices.

We were a generation well educated and well indoctrinated in the need to question the system.  We were told we weren’t needed but that we were needed for the greatest task of all.  Our parents didn’t want us, our children weren’t allowed to need us, but we, WE, the future leaders of the world, must remake the world into a better place.  We were given all the tools and backgrounds, money and influence, support and security to cure cancer, find the solution to hunger or stop global warming.  We were given every opportunity… and we changed ourselves into cat-people.  Or dog-people.  Or monkey or lemur- people.

Our elders were outraged.  How could we disgrace them so?  They had given us this monumental task and we waste everything on cosmetics.  What were we trying to prove?  They didn’t get it.  And that’s what we were trying to prove.