My replies are in italics.

Hello? Is anyone there?

Who is this?

Who am I? I don't even know how to answer. Yesterday I could have told you my name and described my whole pathetic life, but a lot has happened since then. I might need a new name and I might not be able to go back to my old life even if I want to.

Do I know you? Are you in some kind of trouble with the law?

Why would you know me? Isn't this a crisis hotline where I tell you how weird my life is and you help me deal with it before I do something too desperate? My roommate gave me this contact, saying I might need someone to talk with. “Why would I ever need that?" I thought, but now here I am, desperate for a chat. For days there's been no sign of my roommate or of that half of the rent and now nobody I know is answering my texts. I'm not in trouble with the law, but I'm not sure what they'd think of me right now, so I don't exactly want to see them.

I'm not a hotline, and I don't need some stranger trying to get me to help them pay rent, but if you just want to tell me what's going on, I can listen. I was just hanging out on Discord and Reddit anyway.

Well, since you are the only one responding to me, I will see if I can put into words what is going on. I'm not trying to get you to pay my rent, that's probably the least of my problems now, but rent was due yesterday and I need my roommate's share before I can pay, so I sneaked out to avoid the landlord and drove to the big national park not too far away.

I started to come here a couple of years ago just to take a long walk and get away from people for an afternoon. It can seem crowded at first, but after you walk a mile or so away from the parking lot, you almost never see anyone else. I started spending the night occasionally after I found camping equipment in the trash. I guess someone was suddenly done with camping after they got rained on. Some of it was broken and ripped, and it takes forever for a sleeping bag to dry out after it gets soaked, but with some patience and sewing and duct tape I was in business. I'm getting off track, back to today.

I hiked up to an awesome place I know. A cliff overlooking the river way down below. Coming straight up would be serious mountain climbing, but walking up the back way isn't hard. I set up my tent and just sat there for a while, thinking about nature and feeling relieved to be away from people. It was a clear, sunny day but a strange and sudden storm arrived. It was like there was lightning across the whole sky all at once. It affected me, well, a lot. Please tell me what you have heard about this strange storm. It was southeast of [redacted], but it looked from here like it covered a huge area and it should be big news if others were affected like I was.

I just checked my news and weather sites and I don't see anything about this storm of yours. Why don't you check the news and weather yourself?

Huh. I assumed it would be in the news. Now I'm not sure I can keep describing my day without sounding completely crazy. I can't check the news, I don't have a Marconi or RCA here. What do you mean you checked sites? Also, what are Discord and Reddit?

You could check on your phone instead of texting me. I checked cnn.com and weather.com. Discord and Reddit are forums where people chat with each other or ask questions and get answers from whoever on the internet feels like answering. Anything in the world you are interested in or curious about, from serious politics to a game or movie has people there eager to talk about it. You can use them in your web browser or they have apps.

None of that makes sense. Check on my phone? Nobody these days has a phone, those Bell voice devices are so outdated. We all use Blackberry and text instead of call. If people are chatting about just anything on forums, it sounds like they are using the internet outside of its research purpose and they will probably get caught and kicked off. Cnn.com? Weather.com? Web browser? Apps? What are you talking about?

Blackberry? Nobody has one of those any more. IPhone and Android won that fight. Marconi, as in the radio inventor? Research purpose? Wait, what year is it and who do you think the most controversial recent US president was?

Blackberry never had to fight anyone. They invented texting so they have the monopoly to make all texting devices. Marconi is the company that makes all the radios. It is 2018 of course, and people either loved or hated the Schwarzenegger administration. Why are you asking these strange questions?

It is 2024 here. Schwarzenegger was governor of California, but he never ran for president.

Really? You're not just making that up?

Yes, really.

Whoa, that sounds like the movie about the multiverse. Hey, my roommate was saying something about an alternate reality where any kind of weirdos could find other people like them to chat with. I thought that was just joking around, but maybe your world is the real deal?

Yeah, that is kinda true about the internet. It sounds like Blackberries just exchange text messages, they aren't phone or internet devices?

Why would you ever want to talk on a phone? That's like asking if it can send Morse Telegraph messages. Nobody does that any more. Texting each other whenever and wherever we are beats having to be home to use a phone. You can reply whenever it is convenient instead of having to interrupt whatever you are doing to talk in real time. The internet isn't available unless you have some kind of a research job. You can only use it on some computers and it isn't very interesting to most people.

I have all kinds of questions about your world, but it sounds like you were about to talk more about what happened in the storm, so maybe that is more urgent?

If we are both okay with assuming some multiverse thing is happening, then maybe the rest of my day won't sound quite as crazy after all.

So, there I was, sitting outside my tent, enjoying the view, then this huge storm formed in just a few minutes, not blowing in from anywhere but fading into existence. Lightning arced all over the sky, not just white but all kinds of colors. Deafening rolling thunder shook the ground and knocked me over. Intense pain I could never have imagined went through me. I must have been struck by lightning. It kept going for what felt like forever. Every part of me seemed to be on fire and I also felt like I was being crushed, like I was way too deep underwater except instead of water it was all hot lava. My vision faded. I figured I was dying. I must have passed out.

Somehow I woke up again. Slowly. Painfully. Every part of me was aching. I could hear that the thunder was over, but my ears were ringing, filled with loud sounds. I worried that if I opened my eyes I would see that I was bleeding all over the place with no hope of surviving. With my eyes still closed I could see strange patterns. My vision system or my brain seemed pretty messed up. I thought about my character from Dungeons and Dragons.

Wait, do you have Dungeons and Dragons in your world?

Sure, D&D started out as a paper-and-pencil role-playing game with dice. Now there are all kinds of video games inspired by it.

Video games? You'll have to tell me what that means some time.

Anyway, I thought about how my D&D character would have a way out of this, but I knew I didn't have someone who could resurrect me or a healing potion.

I wished I had a powerful painkiller I could swallow right now, so at least I wouldn't have to suffer as I died. In my mind I pictured it appearing in my mouth. Suddenly something flickered in my vision and I felt my mouth fill with liquid. I started to cough and that spasm sent new waves of pain everywhere, but I ended up swallowing most of the bitter stuff. Moments later I could feel a warmth inside me, like drinking hot cocoa when I've been out in the freezing cold. As it spread from my mouth and throat and stomach to the rest of me, the pain faded, replaced by a blissful warmth.

Part of me was just thankful for the relief and wanted to relax and go to sleep and not worry that I probably wouldn't wake up.

Other parts of me had other thoughts. My ears were still full of sounds and I started to recognize some of them: birds, wind in the trees, rustling in the underbrush. Everything was oddly loud like it was happening right next to me. My nose was full of scents: earth, distant water, fading ozone. I was not smelling a lot of blood or charred flesh. Maybe I wasn't bleeding and burned after all? Most of the pain was gone now, but my shoulder protested that I was lying on something pointy. I shifted slightly, fearful that I would reawaken the pain, but it was fine. My shoulder felt better, and with the strangeness in my eyes clearing up I finally decided to open them.

The first thing I saw was my tent, knocked down among the ruins. Wait, ruins? Ancient columns, mostly fallen down, were strewn all around. If I were going to build a temple, this would certainly be the spot I would pick, but none of that had been here before, had it?

I had taken a tumble, I had hit my head, this must be a hallucination or amnesia, right? I had swallowed something. Where had it come from? Maybe it was drugs? Maybe it was a strange dream? Whatever was happening it was more interesting than real life, so I decided to see what else I could see.

I tried to get up, but I was all tangled in my clothes. They were all draped on me like I was in a pile of laundry instead of wearing them. Wriggling out of the pile, I sat up and noticed that there was something wrong with my arms. They were all fuzzy. Not like I couldn't see them, but like they were covered in brown fur. Most of my skin had the same fur, speckled from light to dark like a pecan shell. I flexed my right hand and watched it move, not fully believing it was mine. My palm, all three fingers, and thumb were not furred, but the skin was colored to match the fur. I ran my hand down my leg. Yes, I could feel both sides of that. My feet seemed similar to my hands. I reached my hand up to feel my head. I involuntarily flicked my ear away from the touch. That was not a human ear. Now that I was thinking about it, I could direct my ears to swivel around and focus on sounds from different directions. The water down below the cliff was definitely louder when my ears faced that way.

Unsure of how well I could do it, I decided to try standing up very carefully. Just as I started to use my muscles, I heard a rustle right behind me. I froze. I turned my ears to focus behind me. I didn't hear any more rustling. I slowly turned my head to see who or what was sneaking up on me. I saw some bushes. Something must be hiding there. I started to turn the rest of me to face the bushes and suddenly there was another rustle right next to me. I looked down and saw a furry blur run around me to stay out of sight. Angry that something so small had worried me, I quickly reached around behind myself and pounced and caught that little scamp!

You may have guessed more quickly than I did that I was hunting my own tail. I was so startled when I caught it that I let go. It immediately whipped back away from where it was caught. I reached my hand around to the base of my spine where my tail started, wrapped my fingers around it, and brought the end of it into my lap. It was as skittish as I was, which made sense of course. It was all fluffed out like a squirrel's tail. Realizing that it was not an enemy, I petted it and calmed it and myself down and it started to settle into looking more like a cat's tail. As I got used to how it felt for my tail to be petted, I also experimented with moving it on purpose. It didn't take too long to get the end to twitch, then I got the whole thing to swish all the way around so it was coming into my lap from my other side. I wrapped it around my wrist and found that it could actually hold on tight, more like a monkey's tail than a cat's. Having made peace with my tail, I was starting to think this must be real since it was so much more detailed than a dream.

I was ready to try standing up again. This time I started by putting my hands on the ground to steady myself, then got my feet under me. Instead of going up on hands and knees like I expected, I came up on hands and feet and found it quite easy to squat (stand?) like that. Was I a crawling-type animal now? I took a few steps and it felt very steady and natural. This worked much better than crawling ever had before. Is there a more positive-sounding word for walking on all fours?

I still wanted to try standing up. I pushed up with my hands to stand on just my feet. I paced back and forth a little. My balance was different, but walking upright worked fine. When I stopped I found it natural to crouch back on my haunches instead of remaining standing all the way up.

Now that I was getting used to the idea of this being real, I started to think about what to do next. I stepped over to my clothes. They were clearly too large for me now. I went through my pockets. I felt like I was in D&D again, looting a giant's stuff. I got my Blackberry out of one pocket and turned it on. I used to be able to use it one-handed, texting with my thumb. Now I could hold it in one hand but I needed the other to press the buttons. It had survived the storm, but there were no new messages.

I looted my wallet and keys into my other hand, then stepped on something that hurt my foot. The strange patterns from earlier came back into my vision for a moment. I looked down and saw a metallic corner poking out of the ground. I touched it again gently with my toe. The patterns came back. Strange! I wanted to try digging this thing up, but my hands were full. There was no way I could wear my old pants, but I already missed having pockets. I wished I had a handy place to put the things in my hands.

Suddenly, everything disappeared from my hands and the patterns I was seeing changed. Now there were new small, bright pictures at the bottom of my vision and the rest of the patterns had faded. Instead of my precious possessions I now had pictures of them? Startled, I stepped back and the pictures disappeared again.

Well, my hands were free and I was now very determined to dig this thing up. The images flickered on and off as I brushed against the metal cube that I was unearthing with my frantic digging. At first I was worried that it would be some kind of huge, heavy treasure chest I couldn't lift, but the silvery cube turned out to be small enough to hold in one hand. I hoped I was getting the hang of this as I thought about my Blackberry being back in my hand. Sure enough, there it was, and its image disappeared. I tapped on it to make sure it still worked.

Shaking a little from all the stress of new things happening and worried about accidentally wishing for something dangerous, I set down the cube.

The sun was about to set. It would be dark soon. I went over to my tent, found it was not that badly damaged, and set it back up. I put my old shirt over the cube so I could pick it up without touching it and brought it into the tent. I tried sending another message to my roommate. No reply, no surprise. Finally, I remembered I had a new contact and reached out to you, whoever you are. So, that brings us to now.

I am seriously worried about what will happen when I see people again. I'm not sure exactly what I look like since I didn't pack a mirror, but I sure don't look human and I can't think of an animal I would definitely pass as. Has this happened to anyone else? Is everyone some kind of freak now and I'll fit right in? Maybe I could just avoid humans and be a wild animal in the park.

Thanks for listening so far. It helps a bit just to have someone to talk with. Do you have any thoughts? Advice? Questions?

I'm sorry if this sounds rude, but are you some kind of AI chatbot? Each of your messages, even that super long one, arrived here in less than a second. Nobody could type that fast.

I don't know what an AI chatbot is, but I'm not a robot if that is what you are asking. That last long message of mine took at least half an hour to write, probably more. Your replies also get here quickly, like you didn't take any time to think or type. I guess that isn't any stranger than you saying it is 2024.

Okay, fair enough. I guess that means I have some time to figure out what to say next to reply to all you have been through. Do you mind if I ask other people to also make suggestions?

Feel free to ask other people, but only tell me what they have to say if they aren't too rude.

Great, what pronouns should I use when I talk about you?

What do you mean?

If I am saying to a friend “I started chatting with someone new and [he/she/they/it] could use some feedback," which pronoun should I use? He/she/they are the most common ones, but you might have something else in mind.

So I get to choose? And you'll call me whatever I say? But isn't “they" plural?

The whole point is you get to choose how you are introduced, then it's up to everyone else to remember and respect that choice. It isn't always easy but it's a start. “They" used to be mostly plural, but these days it is also commonly used for a person who would rather not be called “he" or “she."

Huh. Well, I actually don't know what's up with this body yet, and I like the idea, so please use “they" for me.

Our new friend has asked for feedback. Do you have any questions or advice for them? Please comment with suggestions for what to say next!