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It began one day before a challenge. Nancy and Mary and Daniel had been friends for years, so close that they all went to the same college together: Anna Maria College, of course, since the twin sisters were both named after the Blessed Marie Anne. And where else did young Catholics go to college when they grew up in the small town of Paxton, Massachusetts?

It was 2025, and you might be too young to remember it, but the Hybrid Rights Movement was still ongoing. While the Catholic Church still hadn't reversed course on Gay Marriage, the new Pope Linus took an early and strong stance against the corporations and against hybrid slavery. With the freshly liberal Supreme Court, the companies that bet so much money on maintaining ownership over their designer people lost big. They ruled that hybrids, having human-like intelligence and matching over 99% of the human genome, had human rights.

They didn't go so far as to declare equal rights (much like the still-missing ERA for women and LGBTs), but hybrids achieved citizenship, the right to vote, and the right to own property just two years after their creation. Way...too...fast for society. Thanks to Pope Linus, Catholic institutions were a bastion of hope for hybrids, and Anna Maria College was no exception, despite efforts from the Paxton City Council to enforce segregation.

Nancy, Mary, and Daniel enrolled the very first year that the college began accepting hybrid applicants, and the small 7,000 person town was flooded with hybrids, from Horses to Dogs to Cats. The freshman class was twenty percent hybrid, one of the highest in the nation!

So when the three friends signed up for Human Development, they weren't surprised to find three hybrid classmates - a Dog, and two Cats. The Dog, named Pittsburgh on account of his base breed figures into the story, as he was randomly assigned to the same group as the three. Nancy claimed she never liked the Pitbull, but Mary told me that she was just jealous of Daniel's interest in him.

Nancy and Daniel had been best friends since grade school. The only person closer to Nancy was her twin sister, but there was a special sort of bond with the boy. Nancy had always been a bit of a tomboy, and Daniel liked all the same shows and games as she did. According to Mary, Nancy had had a crush on the mousey-haired Daniel the whole time, but he seemed completely uninterested in girls.

He swore he wasn't gay, but that's exactly what a gay Catholic would have done in the early twenty-first century!

Which is why his sudden fascination with Pittsburgh really put her off. While Daniel was asking about the Dog's time at the company, Nancy was clipping her words and providing the thinnest veil of courtesy, pretending to fix her long, dark brown hair. Remember, the Church still viewed homosexuality as a sin, and had quickly put its foot down on interspecies couples, and all her doubts resurfaced anew when she watched the two together.

When the time came to finish their group paper, Nancy stayed home in silent protest, Boxxing her portion of the project to the cloud while the others met up in dorm work room 3A. To be fair, she was already fairly irritable already from cramping, but Mary was still going despite that. She just made up a big homework assignment in calculus as an excuse.

“Thank God we're done with that project," Nancy complained to Daniel the next day in class.

“Oh, it wasn't so bad," he said, blushing.

Nancy gave him a level glance and said, “I can't believe you like that Dog. He's such a meathead. We always hated guys like that in high school."

Mary, sitting to the left of her sister, leaned over and defended Pittsburgh. “Hardly. Just because he works out doesn't mean he's a jock. He actually wrote his section of the paper really well."

Pittsburgh walked in at that exact moment, walking with a confidence that only a two-hundred pound Pitbull could muster. He was wearing a tank-top to show off his arms, and even Nancy had to admit he looked strong. Though part of that was the way Koch Industries had designed him. Nancy only had a second to whisper, “See how cocky he is…?"

The white-furred Dog strode right over to sit next to Daniel, smirking at the much less impressive eighteen-year-old. Perhaps he was feeling self-conscious, because he just looked down, gulping.

Mary said, “Do you want a copy, since you were gone…?" She was talking to Nancy, but her eyes were glancing down the row at Pittsburgh.

Nancy rolled her eyes. “I'm sure it's fine."

The teacher finally waltzed in, three minutes late. Two more, and half the class would have booked for the door. Mostly freshmen took the course, and some hadn't done a particularly good job adjusting to the newfound freedom of living outside of their Catholic parents' roofs.

Professor Doherty was a middle-aged redhead with an obvious passion for her class. She considered the care, development, and understanding of pregnancy, birth, and baby-care to be of utmost importance to both Catholic men and women. She stressed how so many Catholic dads left the child-rearing up to their wives, when they needed to provide an example early and often for their leadership in the family.

That day was no exception. “As we transition into the next section on pregnancy, I am going to offer you all the same extra credit I do every year." With a plop, she placed the heavy load she was carrying onto the desk. They looked like white, pleather vests, and that's what they were. “As always, this is offered to the guys and the girls, though I've never had a guy take me up on it before. To truly understand what it means to be pregnant, you need to wear the weight. These are pregnancy vests."

A boy in the front said, “How much extra credit?"

Doherty replied smoothly, “Two grade points - twenty percent."

The whole class was in a hush. That could take a C to an A…

“But you have to wear them every hour, every day, for nine months," she added.

A collective groan went through the class. Doherty went on to explain, “Except for showering, you will wear your vest under your clothes, adding the requisite amount of weight according to this schedule," she said, pointing to a URL on the board. “You're in luck! The first month is a freebie - you don't even need to wear the vests."

“But this is about commitment," she continued. “If you start the challenge, you have to finish it, or your grade will drop by a grade point. So what do you think? Any takers?"

Nancy glanced at Mary and Daniel. Carrying around the weight of a baby, just for the extra credit? She was going to get an A anyway, right? But the first quiz had gone pretty badly, with only a B-. Mary glanced at Daniel, and Daniel glanced at Mary, and Mary raised her hand. “I'll do it."

Professor Doherty glanced back to the back of the class and said, “If you haven't changed your mind by the end of class, come speak to me, and I'll show you how the vests work."

“Mary!" Nancy gasped. Her twin had gotten an A on the first quiz. This was more likely to hurt her grade than help her.

Daniel raised his hand next, without even talking to his best friend, first. “Me too."

Now everyone in the class was looking back, at the young man who volunteered to appear pregnant for nine months.

Mrs. Doherty blinked. “There's no leniency for men. If you don't follow through, your grade will drop."

Daniel nodded. “I know, but I just...I want to know what it feels like."

“Well class, that's a first! Anyone else?"

Nancy crouched beside her oldest friend and whispered, “What are you doing? This is crazy!"

Daniel just shrugged. “It's easy points - the final is worth the same percentage. I might be able to just skip it."

“Shouldn't we talk this over?" Nancy asked.

Daniel said, “We?"

Nancy growled. “Yes, 'we'. I'm not going to let you go through with this without me."

“Nance, wait," the boy said.

“I'll do it, too," Nancy exclaimed to the class.