Chapter 2: Bob

I can't believe the path she had gone down. She went from an avatar based on Mother Theresa to that of Nicki Minaj. Well technically the human avatar that Theresa was designing started out looking more like the late 20th century rapper named Lil' Kim, but as she studied more of the various human females of earth's history, something about Nicki Minaj must have hit a cord with her. Despite spending close to half a century with the former Quinlan, an otter like alien race, her way of thinking still eluded me sometimes.

Frankly I was surprised that FAITH, being a rather strict Christian theocracy, had kept the records and images of such women, but they were buried deep in the data to serve as examples of ways women shouldn't act, dress, look, or come anywhere close to in any regards. Plus more sensible countries had historical records that I used to correct the alternative history FAITH created when they took control of the United States of America.

How did we get to this point is anyone's guess? When we first started the idea of Theresa taking on a human avatar, we went through a list of current and historical women in the human sphere. While Theresa wasn't actually her name, it was just the English equivalent of her Quinlan name that the computer picked out for her. Still, Theresa's first focus was on one Mother Teresa. Being a former academic of history and philosophy, Theresa found the woman interesting from a historical perspective. That led us to have many discussions on the many religions of the earth, especially Christianity, which given my experiences with FAITH was sort of a sore spot for me. My bad experiences got me to be very passionate at times, but that branched out and we both had a lot of fun finding the many flaws of most of the Earth's religions. Theresa even merge the features of Joan of Arc, being a woman warrior of faith, into the Mother Teresa like avatar for a brief bit of time, but I am guessing our discussions on Christianity probably soured her on using saints from that religion as a base for her human avatar.

That branched out to the history of my home country of America, and its history. While the culture that I grew up with was mostly derived from the Christians that came over, Theresa found the philosophy of liberalism more interesting. Also how it seemed to be contradicted by the treatment of the Native American and Slaves of Africa. From what she knew of history, there weren't many different Quinlan "races" to her knowledge, the only example that she could cite was when a large population of lighter furred Quinlan were forced to work in harsher climates and conditions on their home world. With this she played around with an avatar that looked very similar to Pocahontas with some features taken from the Native American woman who help Lewis and Clark explore the west, Sacagawea into the mix. Theresa tried to merge a bit of Harriet Tubman into the avatar before giving that up due to the clash of features, and later integrating the Rosa Park image into that mash up.

Although Theresa was fascinated with the age of enlightenment in general, and we would discuss the history and our thoughts on it for literal hours (even though we experience time in millisecond intervals), she never modeled any of her avatars after women from that time period. Theresa did briefly try to create an avatar based on Jane Austin and her many female characters, but she never could come up with one that she liked enough to actually use.

Someone may ask me how did Theresa go from those human avatars to the one that I jokingly called the bootylicious wordsmith. My best guess is that Quinlan tend to be more artistic and musical than the average human, even if they can't come close to us when it comes to dancing, so while Theresa might have not been a scholar in that area of study. It was an area of interest for her. Amazingly our taste in music perfectly aligned at first. Sure, I was more of fan of Mozart and she was more in to Chopin, but we both like classical music more and our interest in newer music had diminishing returns. That was until the 1980s where she took an interest in hip hop and later rap music which I had very little interest in. Unlike me, Theresa could enjoy the music in full context given she learned English, among many other languages, while I still relied on translations for every language. Sure, she found a lot of that genre as vacuous as me, but sometime songs that I could barely understand half the time, Theresa found fascinating. At some point she fixated on Lil' Kim and tried that out as an avatar. Slowly as Theresa went through the music, she talked about morphing the model to be closer to that of Nicki Minaj.

Today was the first day Theresa was going to model the new design for me.

"Ready?" She said in perfect English that didn't sync well with her current Quinlin form which she claimed was a re-creation of her in her prime.

"As I ever am." I told her in all honesty.

Theresa waddled pass the oriental style changing screen, that she helped me pick out, and came out the other side. I got a good look, and then quickly averted my eyes from her current form with a blush on my face.

"What?" I could hear Theresa call from behind my hand.

"Uh, didn't we have this talk about clothes before."

"I am wearing them." She answered back.

I moved my hand shield from my face, and yep she was wearing clothes. Just enough clothes to cover the bare minimal. So, I bared with my embarrassment and gave her a glance. Theresa looked like a slightly smaller version of that famous rapper with some slight modifications. Only slightly, with the same amount of clothing. "Ah… I like the design, but the clothes might be a little bit… bitty."

"You humans with your rules on modesty. I found her wearing something very similar to this in one of those music video thingies in her file." She gestured to the sunflower pasties that just barely cover her nipples before sweeping her hands down at the garden themed bikini bottom that she was currently wearing. "And I thought that those rules came from more religious beliefs, and you led me to believe that you believed that most of them were nonsense."

"While true," I tried to defend my shame without falling back on the logic of religion. "There are… certain practical reasons for humans to wear more clothing."

"Like for warmth and protection from the element, since your species has no fur, I understand that." Theresa seemed like she was agreeing, but that was usually a bad sign. "But as you been telling me, we aren't biological anymore. What need is there for such things?"

"You're right," I conceded. "It isn't for any religious or really any logical reason why I'm… well not against it. It is just sort of a holdover from my time when I was still alive. You know cultural norms that just become engrained in you."

Theresa raised an eyebrow a little unnaturally high, I would have to talk to her about correcting that later, over the larger and wider set eyes that she preferred to modify her human avatars with. "Yes, I know all about that from the history I have gone over. But I have to wonder if it has less to do with social conditioning than the fact that it is mating season all the time for you humans."

"Well, uh, I…" I fumbled to get out anything at that observation.

She picked an incredibly cute laugh to go with that smile. "I understand, I will change into something that covers more of this furless skin. After all we are meeting with some other humans that presumably have the same sensibilities as you. Although I think I will keep the Garden of Eden theme given this modesty and knowledge of yours seems to be tied together even outside of its religious context."

"Thank you!" I breathed out with a sigh of relief. We met with Bridget and Howard fairly often for virtual get togethers. There was never a problem when Theresa was using the Saintly Avatar, but the few times that she had sported the Indian Princess model that Bridget had given Theresa some… looks. Theresa seemed to pick up on this after a couple times and dressed less like an American Indian and more like Rosa Parks even before those features made it into the design. This was the first time since the switch that we were to meet up and I didn't want anything to spoil the mood.

Especially since it might be the last time, we would be doing this. At least for a while.