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Aaron woke up with a headache, and surrounded by blue goo. He coughed and tried to shake it off, but he was stuck in bed. Or... no, that was glass in front of him.

From the other side, a blurry human face appeared, saying distantly, "Aaron? You awake in there?"

Aaron coughed. Something hard was caught against his face.

The other guy took that as a yes. "Hang on. Don't freak out, okay?"

The glass slid open and Aaron sat up, coughing up goo. His teeth felt all wrong, clicking together, and every muscle was sore. "Ugh. Wha?"

"It's me, Steve. Good news is, we're still on course. You remember, right? Barnard's Star, marketed as a hop, skip and jump away by luxury sleeper starship?"

Aaron nodded. Why were his shoulders twitching like that? "The bad news?" he managed to say. Warm water flushed into the cryopod -- right, he'd been frozen! -- to clear away the worst of the protective slime.

"There was a slight case of, uh, catastrophic life support failure. But hey, nobody actually died! At least beyond what we could fix. Me and Ship AI."

"Coffee," Aaron said. Whatever hour this was, was too early.

"Coffee? Yeah sure, hang on. I'll... get a straw too." Steve ran out of sight across the metal hull plating.

Aaron threw one arm over the side of the pod and started to haul himself out. His hand clicked on the titanium. When he'd swung his torso around his shoulder and back cramped weirdly against the padded medical bed, farther away than it ought to be. He had no time to think about that because he promptly crashed over the side and landed in a heap of limbs.

Too many limbs. He was on his back, but as his vision resolved he spotted a long, feather-edged thing with tufts of blue fur twitching in front of him, tickling him every time it moved. when it brushed against his left leg he not only felt like he'd been hit with a feather-duster, but like the leg itself had touched him. As his sluggish brain began to catch up, he called out, "Steve? Did I just grow a tail?"

Steve hurried back over, just out of view. "Well, no. Technically it was over a month ago; you've been asleep. Here, this might help." He held a mug of steaming coffee up to Aaron's face, with a straw in it. "Drink slowly."

Aaron went cross-eyed trying to see it. There was a hard yellow thing clamped to his mouth. He batted at it but only felt his fingers clicking against the smooth surface. "Help me take this facemask off."

"That's not a mask. Here, let me... Don't be mad, okay? I can explain." He fiddled with a computer pad to activate a camera, then turned it back on him.

Aaron was looking into the yellow beak and feathery face of a giant bird. He opened his mouth to say something and indeed, the bird's beak opened with a confused squawk. Aaron blinked and made faces. "What the hell, Steve?"

His fellow crewman was dressed in a maintenance jumpsuit; Aaron found he was naked but for a layer of fur and feathers. Both?

Steve said, "Ship AI woke me up and reported the cryo system was failing. I had to do some jury-rigging, and long story short, I had to activate the medical nanites to rebuild everybody's body on the fly. But they wouldn't work if they were just changing you to yourself -- technically they would but only with some settings I didn't know about -- and so I applied an elective transformation template to talk the nanites into rebuilding you."

Aaron held up one hand, and saw it was yellow and scaly, as though he were wearing a gauntlet. Each finger ended in a claw, and there were only three and a clawed thumb. He spent a few seconds trying to figure out which finger felt like it was missing: second finger, probably; he had a distinct left, middle and pointer. Thinking about that was a nice distraction from... okay, no, he had to ask. "What am I, Steve?"

"Griffin. You're a cat-bird thing. Had to use one of the templates on file already, so you're a physical copy of somebody on Earth who ordered a custom body."

Aaron tried to stand up, but wobbled and fell over onto his taloned hands. A second effort propped him up on his legs, but he was wobbly. "My feet...?" Besides being cold on the floor, where mist pooled around them, they were long and padded, making him feel like he was standing on tiptoe. He couldn't lower himself to stand properly on his heels. "Prop me up, will you?"

"You might be better off on all fours."

He tried to get a better sense of his own balance. He could stand like this, but only barely, and when he tried taking a step forward he fell over until Steve grabbed his arm. "Whoa! So wait, I'm a quadruped? But I've got thumbs."

"You're taking this well, so that's good. Thumbs up!"

Aaron glared at him. "Why not an elf template or something?"

"I panicked, okay? I had to reset all of the cryopods in a hurry and --"

"Wait, wait. What time is it?"

"Ship time is zero-zero-thirty."

"Yeah, too early for this. Let me down and give me that coffee."

Steve gently lowered him to the floor. Aaron wobbled and tried his balance on all fours, finding his arms were strong enough to take his weight easily. He hopped up gently onto his legs enough to feel their weird bent-back angle, got distracted by the tail he'd been trying to ignore, and then went wide-eyed as something fluttered on either side of his back. "Steve? Do I have wings?"

"Yep."

"That's... uh. Do they work?"

"Depends on the gravity and air. With this build the spec sheet says you can't actually fly in most conditions, but you should be able to glide with practice."

Aaron's mind still spun. "Coffee."

"Right." Aaron set the mug on the floor in front of Aaron's beak. Aaron peered down into it for a moment, spotted the straw, and awkwardly bit it in his beak. After a few tries he was able to sip hot coffee, and he spent a couple of minutes just doing that. "So. Blue-furred griffin, huh?"

"Don't be mad at me, Aaron. I saved your life."

"The cryopods were failing?"

"Yeah."

Aaron felt the ship's cold, dry air flowing through his powerful lungs, and tried not to shiver with chills or fear. "Thank you, then. But... you said cryopods, plural."

The pod Aaron had climbed out of was one of fifty in this room alone. The rest lay horizontal too like rows of coffins. Steve looked nervously around at them. Aaron practiced walking by putting one taloned bird-foot in front of the other, following up with his feline hindpaws. He grabbed one of the pods' sides and hauled himself up to his feet. Sure enough, through the rime-caked glass he could see a yellow beak.

Steve coughed behind him. "Just this room, fortunately. So, fifty griffins. I woke you up first because I don't know how to handle this many."

"Only" fifty, out of a thousand colonists. With some caffeine in him Aaron was awake enough to trot around in a circle, nervously fluttering his wings. Now that he was aware of them he couldn't stop twitching them a little with every movement of his arms, like they were cross-wired. Maybe his brain would sort things out later. Right now there were more important problems. Aaron, too, was a life support technician, in fact the backup if Steve's was the pod that failed hard enough to kill him.

Aaron said, "Is the ship itself okay?"

"I checked. We're still on course, no hull damage. Ship AI seems sane and isn't reporting problems besides this one."

Aaron reached back to feel his long tail. It tickled in his claws. There were feathers all along the edges of its back half, and a tuft of blue fur at the tip like a lion's. "Could've been a lot worse, huh?"

Steve nodded vigorously. "Definitely. I picked the griffin model over a couple of other stored templates like a snake-man."

"Who wanted to turn into a naga?"

"I don't know. Some rich dude that ordered the design."

"Next order of business is an inspection, then." Aaron trotted all through the room to look over the other forty-nine pods and plug a diagnostic gadget into each one to check for more problems. Everybody seemed to be alive, just copies of the same griffin. "How long before we can turn back?"

"Two-three years, tops."

Aaron squawked, then clamped one hand over his beak. "Years!"

"This was emergency medical nano, not standard body clinic stuff. Good news is you should be cleared of any genetic problems you had before."

Aaron tried to think of this probem in a positive light. He'd basically shaved years off his age by getting high-quality nanotech treatment like what would normally cost him a fortune. "Young adult, right?"

"Right."

"Cool. Well, this is pretty screwed up, but you could've done a lot worse. Thanks, I think."

"Uh... you're welcome."

Aaron's voice had an odd parrot-like rasp to it that made it harder to read than a human's voice, he thought. He reared up and hugged Steve in appreciation. "You saved us. So, no real harm done, just weirdness. How about we do a full check on the other cryo-systems, then go to the cargo hold and see if I can learn how to glide without crashing too hard?"

Steve smiled and ruffled the feathers atop Aaron's head. "Sure!"

Aaron trotted in search of the right tools to get started with a proper maintenance check, already thinking about rigging up some kind of tool harness to wear. The next few years were going to be awkward, especially once the other new griffins woke up. He glanced back at the colorful, feathery wings on his back, and opened his beak in a sort of smile. For barely surviving a life support failure, he'd turned out pretty well!

Description
Aaron woke up with a headache, and surrounded by blue goo. He coughed and tried to shake it off, but he was stuck in bed. Or... no, that was glass in front of him.

From the other side, a blurry human face appeared, saying distantly, "Aaron? You awake in there?"

Aaron coughed. Something hard was caught against his face.

The other guy took that as a yes. "Hang on. Don't freak out, okay?"

The glass slid open and Aaron sat up, coughing up goo. His teeth felt all wrong, clicking together, and every muscle was sore. "Ugh. Wha?"

"It's me, Steve. Good news is, we're still on course. You remember, right? Barnard's Star, marketed as a hop, skip and jump away by luxury sleeper starship?"

Aaron nodded. Why were his shoulders twitching like that? "The bad news?" he managed to say. Warm water flushed into the cryopod -- right, he'd been frozen! -- to clear away the worst of the protective slime.

"There was a slight case of, uh, catastrophic life support failure. But hey, nobody actually died! At least beyond what we could fix. Me and Ship AI."

"Coffee," Aaron said. Whatever hour this was, was too early.

"Coffee? Yeah sure, hang on. I'll... get a straw too." Steve ran out of sight across the metal hull plating.

Aaron threw one arm over the side of the pod and started to haul himself out. His hand clicked on the titanium. When he'd swung his torso around his shoulder and back cramped weirdly against the padded medical bed, farther away than it ought to be. He had no time to think about that because he promptly crashed over the side and landed in a heap of limbs.

Too many limbs. He was on his back, but as his vision resolved he spotted a long, feather-edged thing with tufts of blue fur twitching in front of him, tickling him every time it moved. when it brushed against his left leg he not only felt like he'd been hit with a feather-duster, but like the leg itself had touched him. As his sluggish brain began to catch up, he called out, "Steve? Did I just grow a tail?"

Steve hurried back over, just out of view. "Well, no. Technically it was over a month ago; you've been asleep. Here, this might help." He held a mug of steaming coffee up to Aaron's face, with a straw in it. "Drink slowly."

Aaron went cross-eyed trying to see it. There was a hard yellow thing clamped to his mouth. He batted at it but only felt his fingers clicking against the smooth surface. "Help me take this facemask off."

"That's not a mask. Here, let me... Don't be mad, okay? I can explain." He fiddled with a computer pad to activate a camera, then turned it back on him.

Aaron was looking into the yellow beak and feathery face of a giant bird. He opened his mouth to say something and indeed, the bird's beak opened with a confused squawk. Aaron blinked and made faces. "What the hell, Steve?"

His fellow crewman was dressed in a maintenance jumpsuit; Aaron found he was naked but for a layer of fur and feathers. Both?

Steve said, "Ship AI woke me up and reported the cryo system was failing. I had to do some jury-rigging, and long story short, I had to activate the medical nanites to rebuild everybody's body on the fly. But they wouldn't work if they were just changing you to yourself -- technically they would but only with some settings I didn't know about -- and so I applied an elective transformation template to talk the nanites into rebuilding you."

Aaron held up one hand, and saw it was yellow and scaly, as though he were wearing a gauntlet. Each finger ended in a claw, and there were only three and a clawed thumb. He spent a few seconds trying to figure out which finger felt like it was missing: second finger, probably; he had a distinct left, middle and pointer. Thinking about that was a nice distraction from... okay, no, he had to ask. "What am I, Steve?"

"Griffin. You're a cat-bird thing. Had to use one of the templates on file already, so you're a physical copy of somebody on Earth who ordered a custom body."

Aaron tried to stand up, but wobbled and fell over onto his taloned hands. A second effort propped him up on his legs, but he was wobbly. "My feet...?" Besides being cold on the floor, where mist pooled around them, they were long and padded, making him feel like he was standing on tiptoe. He couldn't lower himself to stand properly on his heels. "Prop me up, will you?"

"You might be better off on all fours."

He tried to get a better sense of his own balance. He could stand like this, but only barely, and when he tried taking a step forward he fell over until Steve grabbed his arm. "Whoa! So wait, I'm a quadruped? But I've got thumbs."

"You're taking this well, so that's good. Thumbs up!"

Aaron glared at him. "Why not an elf template or something?"

"I panicked, okay? I had to reset all of the cryopods in a hurry and --"

"Wait, wait. What time is it?"

"Ship time is zero-zero-thirty."

"Yeah, too early for this. Let me down and give me that coffee."

Steve gently lowered him to the floor. Aaron wobbled and tried his balance on all fours, finding his arms were strong enough to take his weight easily. He hopped up gently onto his legs enough to feel their weird bent-back angle, got distracted by the tail he'd been trying to ignore, and then went wide-eyed as something fluttered on either side of his back. "Steve? Do I have wings?"

"Yep."

"That's... uh. Do they work?"

"Depends on the gravity and air. With this build the spec sheet says you can't actually fly in most conditions, but you should be able to glide with practice."

Aaron's mind still spun. "Coffee."

"Right." Aaron set the mug on the floor in front of Aaron's beak. Aaron peered down into it for a moment, spotted the straw, and awkwardly bit it in his beak. After a few tries he was able to sip hot coffee, and he spent a couple of minutes just doing that. "So. Blue-furred griffin, huh?"

"Don't be mad at me, Aaron. I saved your life."

"The cryopods were failing?"

"Yeah."

Aaron felt the ship's cold, dry air flowing through his powerful lungs, and tried not to shiver with chills or fear. "Thank you, then. But... you said cryopods, plural."

The pod Aaron had climbed out of was one of fifty in this room alone. The rest lay horizontal too like rows of coffins. Steve looked nervously around at them. Aaron practiced walking by putting one taloned bird-foot in front of the other, following up with his feline hindpaws. He grabbed one of the pods' sides and hauled himself up to his feet. Sure enough, through the rime-caked glass he could see a yellow beak.

Steve coughed behind him. "Just this room, fortunately. So, fifty griffins. I woke you up first because I don't know how to handle this many."

"Only" fifty, out of a thousand colonists. With some caffeine in him Aaron was awake enough to trot around in a circle, nervously fluttering his wings. Now that he was aware of them he couldn't stop twitching them a little with every movement of his arms, like they were cross-wired. Maybe his brain would sort things out later. Right now there were more important problems. Aaron, too, was a life support technician, in fact the backup if Steve's was the pod that failed hard enough to kill him.

Aaron said, "Is the ship itself okay?"

"I checked. We're still on course, no hull damage. Ship AI seems sane and isn't reporting problems besides this one."

Aaron reached back to feel his long tail. It tickled in his claws. There were feathers all along the edges of its back half, and a tuft of blue fur at the tip like a lion's. "Could've been a lot worse, huh?"

Steve nodded vigorously. "Definitely. I picked the griffin model over a couple of other stored templates like a snake-man."

"Who wanted to turn into a naga?"

"I don't know. Some rich dude that ordered the design."

"Next order of business is an inspection, then." Aaron trotted all through the room to look over the other forty-nine pods and plug a diagnostic gadget into each one to check for more problems. Everybody seemed to be alive, just copies of the same griffin. "How long before we can turn back?"

"Two-three years, tops."

Aaron squawked, then clamped one hand over his beak. "Years!"

"This was emergency medical nano, not standard body clinic stuff. Good news is you should be cleared of any genetic problems you had before."

Aaron tried to think of this probem in a positive light. He'd basically shaved years off his age by getting high-quality nanotech treatment like what would normally cost him a fortune. "Young adult, right?"

"Right."

"Cool. Well, this is pretty screwed up, but you could've done a lot worse. Thanks, I think."

"Uh... you're welcome."

Aaron's voice had an odd parrot-like rasp to it that made it harder to read than a human's voice, he thought. He reared up and hugged Steve in appreciation. "You saved us. So, no real harm done, just weirdness. How about we do a full check on the other cryo-systems, then go to the cargo hold and see if I can learn how to glide without crashing too hard?"

Steve smiled and ruffled the feathers atop Aaron's head. "Sure!"

Aaron trotted in search of the right tools to get started with a proper maintenance check, already thinking about rigging up some kind of tool harness to wear. The next few years were going to be awkward, especially once the other new griffins woke up. He glanced back at the colorful, feathery wings on his back, and opened his beak in a sort of smile. For barely surviving a life support failure, he'd turned out pretty well!