Many remember Apollo as the Greek god responsible for driving the sun across the sky each day. Some recall that he was also the god of music and healing. Fewer know that another of his divine powers was the ability to send a plague of rats amongst those who displeased him. When Apollo appeared in his aspect as the Lord of Rats, he was known as Smintheus.
"Smintheus, with your arrows, make the Greeks pay for my tears."
~Homer, "The Iliad"
"So, David," said Brian Barker. "Tell me about yourself."
"My name is David Lamb," he recited. "I'm fifteen years old. I'm not sure what grade I'm in, because I've always been homeschooled, but in most of my subjects I'm doing college-level work. I'm interested in learning more about what my chances might be if I applied to NYU."
"Well, let's take a look," said the admissions counselor. "You said you're doing college-level work in most of your subjects?"
Of course he would start with that. David focused on staying calm, the way Leonardo had taught him. "Language Arts has never been my strong suit. But in science and math I tested out of my homeschool program's graduation requirements two years ago, and since then I've been taking distance courses from various universities."
"And is it science and math you plan to pursue?" Brian asked.
"I want to study biology," David said, "or a related field."
"What got you interested in that?" Brian asked.
"My mom is a veterinarian," David replied. "I've been helping in her clinic since I was little. I'm not sure that's exactly what I want to do for a career, but I definitely want to work with animals."
"Mm-hmm." A pause while Brian typed into his database program. "Tell me about your other extracurriculars. Volunteering, paid work, clubs, sports?"
"I write code," David said awkwardly. When that didn't seem like enough, he blurted, "I trained a blind cat as a service animal."
"… Excuse me?"
"For myself," David explained. "I'm… disabled, and can't get out of the house much."
It could hardly be the first time Brian had worked with a disabled applicant. "What is the nature of your disability?" he asked, without missing a beat.
David bit his lip. "I'd rather not say right now."
"But you have an official diagnosis?" Brian asked.
David thought of the stacks of medical files, the hidden folder his mother had only showed him a few months ago, the secret notebooks he still hadn't seen. How all of it was wrong, and the truth was he was a red-eared slider turtle, Trachemys scripta elegans, that had been accidentally and imperfectly mutated into humanoid form, leaving a team of baffled experts struggling to deal with a complex of medical issues that had been almost entirely misdiagnosed. "Oh yes," he said.
"Well, David," Brian said, "we'd certainly be happy to take a look at your transcript. In the meantime, definitely think about taking some writing courses. Your admissions essay will count for a lot."
"I'll do that," David said. "Thanks, Mr. Barker."
"Take care, David," Brian said, and hung up.
David made a note in his own database, and closed the password-protected file.
Wanted: Used lap top. Must be absolutly free of spy ware THIS IS NOT A JOKE.
Black Sheep, what is up with you? OriginalPhreaker posted back. First somebody said you'd gone missing, now you need an untraceable machine? Who is "After_March" anyway?
My menter, actully, replied "Black Sheep", also known as David Lamb. His mother hated puns on their last name. It had been with great reluctance that she'd accepted a colleague's suggestion to name her veterinary clinic Gentle - as in, as a lamb - Care. David thought it was a great name, and he was pretty proud of his forum handle too. Im fine. Im just working on a project.
Within a few days, he had an offer. The forum member wanted to be paid in tedious code refactoring. It would take weeks.
David agreed without hesitation.
"Donatello," said Uncle Stephen, when David called him one afternoon. "Always a pleasure."
David wholeheartedly agreed with that. Stephen was married to Terri, who had been David's mom's best friend since forever, which obviously made the two of them his aunt and uncle. Stephen spent his life fighting with people - he was a lawyer - and yet he was endlessly patient, with an incredible capacity to listen to and take seriously any topic that anyone wanted to talk to him about. Mom was really struggling with the idea of calling her son "Donatello", but Uncle Stephen had not even lifted a brow when David asked to be called by the new name.
"Uncle Stephen," David said, and hesitated a long minute. It wasn't that he thought his uncle would yell at him for what he was about to say, or laugh at him, or anything else. He was just painfully aware of what the next five words were going to do to his life - and to the lives of several people he had come to care a lot about. "I want to be human."
"Yes," Uncle Stephen said, after his characteristic thoughtful pause. "I have heard about the procedures you are contemplating. This is a big step, Donatello."
It wasn't a warning or a word of discouragement, merely an observation that was hard to disagree with. "No," said David. "I don't think being physically human is what I want. What I want is to be legally human."
A different kind of pause, which from long familiarity David recognized as an invitation to continue. Most people - especially smart people, he had observed - couldn't wait for their own turn to speak, but Uncle Stephen had the gift of listening.
"You work with adoptions, right?" He knew it was right, and Uncle Stephen knew he knew, so he didn't wait for an answer. "You transfer children from one legal guardian to another. But how does it work when the child doesn't already have a legal guardian? When they don't belong to anyone?"
"I have worked with surrendered children," Uncle Stephen said, and David's heart lifted a little. He was not the only baby to ever have been abandoned on a doorstep. "There is a process for getting them into the legal system - a name, a Social Security number, a family. Are you asking me to help you navigate that process, Donatello?"
David fervently wished that non-supernatural forces would bless this man for being so perceptive, for acting as though the request he had just voiced was completely normal and reasonable. "Yes," he said.
"But you are concerned that your… unusual appearance will cause difficulty," Uncle Stephen surmised, with his usual level of tact. How was it possible that none of this had rubbed off on Mom over the years?
"Exactly," David said. "Social Security numbers, legal guardians, civil rights… those are all for humans. What if the court looks at me and says I'm not human?"
There was an especially long pause as Uncle Stephen leafed through his encyclopedic legal knowledge, formulating an answer. "Donatello," he said finally, "the point you raise may be more the domain of science fiction than of legal reality. That said, it may be true that there is no serious precedent for determining the status of an individual who is not manifestly human, and whose parentage is… unknown," he said carefully. David suspected that Uncle Stephen had heard at least part of the wild story that supposedly accounted for his origins - the story Splinter had told Mom - but that was something they would discuss later.
"What do you think would happen?" David asked.
"The court certainly would want DNA evidence," Uncle Stephen said, which shed little light on whether he did or did not know what Ron had found in David's genome. "After that, I would expect a prolonged debate on what it means to be human, followed by tests based on the criteria that emerge, any of which I am certain you could pass. But Donatello," he said, and now his tone was warning. "It will not be easy. You will be tried in the court of public opinion, and even if you prevail in your case, you will never have what you envision as a normal life. The physical risks may be less immediate, but I advise you to think just as carefully about this as you would about radical surgery."
"I will," David said. "Thanks, Uncle Stephen."
"Any time, Donatello," Uncle Stephen said.
David set the wall phone back in the cradle. He needed to think about how he was going to explain this to his brothers without inciting them to kidnapping again.