FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

'Objects in motion stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.' (Newton)

He could almost feel it starting.

It could be a vicious cycle. Sometimes it only had to start from a very small doubt as to whether or not he'd be going to be able to make it home without having to have it happen to him this time. Then, just a slightly larger moment of uncertainty about whether or not he'd be going to be able to suppress that very same first doubt. From there, it could keep building on itself, until it would snowball out of his control. He'd just felt so trapped.

He'd always hated being on the metro.

He'd started feeling that dreaded, familiar tightening in his chest, the butterflies in his stomach, hyperventilating. There had been so many people around him pressing against him from everywhere around him that he'd started having trouble breathing. The more he'd focused on how he had to make sure that it wouldn't happen, the more obsessed he'd become about what if it if did happen, the more his threshold would lower and his resistance weaken. He didn't know whether he would have had anxiety without it or not, but he'd never have the opportunity to find out.

He'd screamed, and everyone on the wagon had screamed around him, as spikes had abruptly erupted from his skin all over his body...

***

The more he had thought about it, the more Klein had realized that he'd needed to have some kind of plan for his own life, or that someone else - his parents, his ex-girlfriend, Boko, it didn't matter who - had been going to make plans about his life for him, and he hadn't wanted that. He'd thought about what he'd been running away from, and about where he could in fact run toward based on that. He'd wanted to get back at his parents' clothing business somehow.

It hadn't seemed enough to him to run away. He'd wanted to actually do something about the injustices that he'd felt complicit with because of his previous job. So he'd decided that he'd wanted to figure out a way to go on a trip to Brazil, where the heart of his parents' fabric factories resided, to find a way to sneak in, to gather evidence about how they'd mistreated their workers that would force them to improve their working conditions, and to escape back North.

Easy in, easy out - at least that had been the plan.

The crux of the issue had been going to be how to figure out a way to actually get to Brazil on such a limited budget as he'd had. He'd still had a bit of money that he'd taken with him when he'd first left home, but he hadn't brought all that much. What did people do when they wanted to go places that were very far away but couldn't afford to go in the stories he'd read, he'd asked himself?

Maybe he should become a stowaway.

It had come to him almost as a joke at first, but the more he had thought about it, the more he had thought that it really had seemed like the best way he could find to get there. He'd just have to make sure not to get caught. If anything, Boko had at least taught Klein a couple of things about how not to get caught doing things that he hadn't been allowed to do, he'd supposed. He may as well have made the most of what few skills life had thrown his way.

Money had been kind of annoying, it'd occurred to him. He'd have never been in a situation in which he'd have considered doing something so strange to be able to accomplish his goal if it hadn't been for money. It'd been the first time that he'd been confronted with just how annoying it could be, but it had really been changing the way he'd thought about it. What a strange thing money had been in the first place, he'd thought.

As an otter sailor had walked past him carrying cargo aboard a ship at the dock, Klein had taken advantage of the fact that the mustelid's back had been turned to surreptitiously wall leap on a large net wrapped around cargo to hold it together, and had clung to it while it had been being used to load it. The skunk had hidden in a very small compartment, having brought only the items that had seemed most necessary to his immediate survival. When the ship would dock in Brazil, he would have to find a way to sneak back out without getting noticed then either. It'd seemed like his fear of drawing attention as bad while a child had been for good reason after all.

He hadn't been sure of how he'd be able to survive aboard the ship, the more he had thought about it after having boarded it, but it had been too late to change his mind and to go back to the shore by then. The ship had already been at sea. Even if he could have made it off the ship without being seen, there would have been no way that he could swim all the way to the shore without drowning by that point. He'd brought what little food and drink he could carry on his person with him, but that hadn't been going to last him for more than a handful of days before he'd run right out of it.

So what had he been going to do?

As days had passed, and his supplies had dwindled, he'd become more and more desperate for some kind of solution, but the hungrier he'd become, the more frantic his thought patterns had become, and the more difficult it had become to think of a solution of any kind. Eventually, his supplies of food had run out altogether, and his terror of dying of starvation had become the only thing on his mind. The kids who'd used to bully him would probably have had a field day with how much he'd stank by then, but he probably wouldn't have paid any attention to anything they'd have said and simply tried to eat them by that point.

One day his stomach had growled so loud that a sailor on the ship had heard him.

Prying open the compartment in the wall that had kept Klein hidden away from the sight of others, the otter who the skunk had sneaked past when he'd made his way on the boat unnoticed had finally found him, with a puzzled expression across his whiskered face. Klein had panicked at first. "Oh, we have a stowaway!" the otter had exclaimed. "Please don't kill me!" the skunk had begged him, not at his most rational because of what the hunger had done to his mind. "I'm not gonna kill you," the otter had smiled at him, seeming amused that Klein would have assumed that he'd do something so extreme because the otter had found him.

"How'd you get on here?" the otter had tilted his head at him. "I snuck on board while you weren't looking," the skunk had explained, "I'm sorry. Are you going to have me arrested?" Klein had known that it had seemed like the likeliest outcome by far. Certainly, it's what would have happened to him if he had been dealing with practically any other sailor at all. He had no right to be there, and there were always consequences for being places you shouldn't be.

"Well, that depends. Did you do anything to hurt anyone on the ship? Were you going to?" Klein had firmly shaken his head no. "Why'd you get on here?" the otter had asked him. "You're going to Brazil," Klein had answered, "I had to find a way to get there somehow." The otter had seemed to ponder this. "And you couldn't afford to book passage on here, could you?" he'd asked. "No," the skunk had answered pitifully. "Why are you going to Brazil?" Klein had looked him in the face earnestly. "I need to exorcise demons from my past." The otter had raised his eyebrows at him. "What do you mean by that?" he'd asked.

"It's kind of a long story," Klein had answered. "Well, skunk... If I like your story, maybe I'll help you stay. How about?" Klein had never thought that he would get an offer like this. So the skunk began to tell the otter his story, starting from his childhood with his family, to what had happened because of his work at the factory, to how he had left everything behind because of it, and wanted some kind of closure.

"That's quite a story. May I suggest something to you, skunk?" Klein had been uncertain at first, and had wondered a few wrong directions this conversation could go. He'd asked himself how far he'd be willing to go by that point, how desperate he'd really been. "Sure." If he hadn't liked it, he could always say no, and face the music. The otter had said 'suggest,' he'd tried to reassure himself. On some level, that implied the possibility of disagreement, if it had been said in earnest. "I basically work on this ship as an all-around janitor, gopher and housekeeper," the otter had started, "would you like to split half of my pay and duties with me for the trip?"

It had seemed to Klein like the offer of a lifetime. "Yes!"

The otter had had such a gentle demeanor, he couldn't help but notice. "Good," he'd said, "I knew we could work something out. And who might you be, if you don't mind my asking?" Everything the otter had done had seemed like it had been carefully calculated not to exert too much outward pressure on anything around him, but without a trace of restraint from him, as if it had simply been effortless for him to behave this way. "My name's Klein. And you are?"

"Bridges," the otter had said. "Welcome aboard, Klein."

***

The first time that Klein had noticed that something was 'off' had been a short time after Bridges had handed him the mop on the bridge of the ship. Bridges had been explaining to Klein how to use it while indicating the bucket to him as well and, after the otter had been finished, and the skunk had been about to get to work, Klein had suddenly noticed that he'd no longer been holding the mop that Bridges had handed to him at the beginning of their conversation. At first Klein had been confused. Had his sense of time become messed up from starvation and dehydration? Had he remembered Bridges handing him the mop earlier than he really had?

Then suddenly, while Klein had been mopping the bridge, he'd checked his pockets and panicked - he could no longer find his wallet in the pocket he'd left it in! At least he'd been convinced he'd left his wallet in that pocket. When he'd returned to the cabin that he'd now shared with Bridges, he'd found his wallet on his bed, even though he hadn't remembered having left it there. Had his mind been playing tricks on him? He'd wondered if he should bring anything up or not, but he'd already been hanging by a thread, allowed on board only at Bridges' favor, because the otter had told the other sailors 'he's with me.' Better not to make waves.

Furthermore, it wouldn't have made sense for Bridges to have taken his wallet and put it on his bed, he'd told himself. After all, what sense would it have made to steal something from someone only to leave it exactly where you know that the person that it belonged to would unerringly find it? There had been so many better places for the otter to have hidden it on the ship. Had Bridges been pranking him, making the most of Klein's disadvantaged situation?

He'd asked a few of the other sailors about Bridges innocuously. Everyone had seemed to have had a really positive impression of Bridges. They'd said that they'd all traveled with him far and wide for years and years, and that in all this time, he'd never been anything but friendly to any of them, that he'd never hurt a fly. They all seemed to take his presence there for granted by then. Whatever his flaws may have been, Bridges had already seemed good steps above Boko.

"Bridges, have you seen my rations bag?" Klein hadn't brought much food with him, but he'd still had the bag that he'd used to carry it with. Or at least he'd thought he did. "Oh yeah, I put it on your bed," Bridges had said. "I've been looking all over for that," the skunk had said gratefully, "where was it?" The otter had looked at him expressionlessly. "I found it," he'd said, as if he'd hoped it'd be enough for Klein not to ask more. So Klein hadn't.

One day the otter had come to take over after Klein had been cooking and cleaning in the ship's galley for his shift. They'd started having a short conversation about this and that aboard the ship, how much time there had been left for the rest of the trip, how the weather had been and had seemed likely to be, how most of the passengers had seemed to have been doing on the trip so far, and minor work-related issues around the ship. It had only last all of a few minutes.

"I was wearing a watch!" Klein had finally exclaimed, eyeing his bare wrist incredulously.

Bridges had sighed. "I was hoping I wouldn't have to admit it to you while you'd be here," the otter had said, handing Klein back his watch as he'd spoken. "I guess it's come to this anyway," Bridges had said dejectedly, Klein surprised that the otter would have been acting so apologetic toward him when he'd only been there on the mustelid's favor in the first place. "Klein... I'm a kleptomaniac."

Klein had certainly not expected that. "How do you do that thing where I don't even see you do it while you're doing it?" He'd just had to ask. "I don't know. I've never known how not to do it," Bridges had tried to explain, "it just sort of happens." The skunk had raised an eyebrow at him. "You mean...?" The otter had looked downcast. "I have no idea I'm doing it. Sometimes not until hours later when I wake up with someone's lighter, or sunglasses, or shoe polish."

Klein had shaken his head. "They don't mind you working on the ship?" That had seemed hard to believe. "This isn't just any crew, Klein... I've lived aboard this ship my whole life. I've been here longer than any of the other sailors here, but they've all existed with me on this ship for years, sometimes decades. They've had a lot of time to get used to me." Klein had been intrigued. "What do they do?" he'd asked.

"Well, they all go through sorting when they first climb aboard, before the ship is about to leave on a trip. Someone makes an inventory of everything they brought aboard the ship, everything that belongs to them. So when the trip ends, even though everyone's possessions have become scattered all over the ship, with the inventory as a point of reference, going back through sorting on the way out, they get given back all the things that belong to them before they leave."

Klein had been starting to get an idea of the fact that the strangeness of some of the problems that other people in the world had had to deal with would sometimes rival even his own. "Wow," he'd started, "that's sort of... I mean, on some level, I'm glad that you'd have found a way to exist like this," he'd added, "with people who seem to accept you the way you are. That can be pretty tough."

It had to be pretty tough for his coworkers, but it'd seemed rude to Klein to mention it.

"Where are you from?" He'd been becoming more curious about this otter who had rescued him. "I've always lived on board this ship. Officially, I'm not a citizen of any nation. I'm a child of the ocean, and a citizen of the world." Klein had tilted his head at him. "But you've been on land before, right?" Bridges had sighed. "There have been specific people who I've stayed with in this or that port town here and there over time, but only with people who know me and who take adequate precautions. Going out into the world on land can be... messy for me," the otter had winced euphemistically. "I do less damage on here, the rest of the time."

Klein had nodded. "I understand." Bridges had seemed to become lost in thought, and a little sad. "We don't have to keep talking about this if you don't want to, you know," he'd assured the otter heartily. It'd occurred to him belatedly that it must've been rather depressing for Bridges to have to dwell on something involuntary that had been so disruptive that he had had to rearrange his whole life around it.

"No, it's important that I do sometimes," Bridges had responded. "A therapist once told me that the fact that I don't notice that I'm doing it when it's happening might be connected with my feelings of guilt about it. On some level I don't want to notice that I'm doing it because I feel bad about it so I kind of stop paying attention to what I'm doing while I do. That's what gives my body the window of opportunity it needs to go around my awareness to get what it wants." Klein had tried to imagine Bridges trying to get through a therapy session without taking his therapist's notepad.

"But why do you think that your body wants it in the first place?" Klein had asked. "I just..." Bridges had had to think about it. "I wish I could explain it. Everything I see is just... inexplicably beautiful to me. I just, I'll be looking at any object, without really thinking about it, and it'll suddenly strike me just how wonderful it is. I think about the person who must've created it, I wonder what that person must've been like. I build a little story around them in my head. I imagine that the object has consciousness. I mean, intellectually, I know it doesn't, but emotionally, it feels like it does. So I just... want to get to know it. I want to become its friend."

Klein hadn't been a kleptomaniac, but this had still resonated with him somehow.

"But you like people too, right?" Bridges had smiled. "I love people! People are awesome. Some people think I love people a little too much," he'd blushed. "You mean those guys in those port towns?" Klein had asked. "Well, they all know what they're in for. I need a place to stay. They like having me over. It's for the duration of the trip. I never lie to any of them. They have other guys too. It's just sort of how we do things." Klein had nodded. "Nothing wrong with that." After the time that he'd spent with Boko, it'd been somewhat refreshing to Klein to imagine people being willing to share openly, without this sense of 'me and mine.'

"Once I met this guy in Japan who wanted to move to Brazil, so I cut a deal with him, kinda like the one I cut with you come to think of it. He helped me on the trip, I helped him get where he was going. He lives there now. In fact I can talk to him about you staying with him if you want," Bridges had offered Klein. "The ship's going to be leaving for about a month. That's how long you have before it stops by Brazil again, then goes back up to North America again."

Klein had duly taken mental note of this. He'd have to do some recon, and act fast.

"When I was younger," Bridges had gone on, seemingly still thinking about what he and Klein had talked about earlier, "I tried to live on land for longer than I do now, but it didn't go well. I started feeling really bad because of all the havoc I wreaked on the world around me. I even tried to kill myself over it." The conversation had taken a dark turn. Klein had wished that he and Bridges had already been close enough that he could've hugged him when he'd said that.

"That's awful..." Bridges had tried to force a smile in thanks. "The guy I was just telling you about was the guy who found me on the shore of Japan. I'd tried to drown myself, but I ended up on the shore, unconscious. So he found me, and nursed me back to health. He tried to talk me into going on living. Eventually, I started trying to guide my condition, even though I couldn't change it. I started trying more consciously to steal from the rich and give to the poor. It made me feel better about it. The restrictions that separate the poor from the rich seem so unfair in the first place that it was hard to feel as bad about doing something that bridged the gap a bit."

Klein had remembered his earlier reflections about how strange money had been, how he'd always taken it for granted because he'd been conditioned to, until it'd become an obstacle.

"You have to understand that I've never needed money," Bridges had explained. "Whenever I've needed something I've just taken it, without even noticing I was. Whenever I saw someone who needed something that I had, I just gave it to them. Deep down, after having talked with the man who saved me, I stopped believing that people could own things at all. I started believing that objects would get bored staying in one location, that they'd want to see the world, just as I had seen it. I don't know for a fact that it's true, but it's kept me alive this long... whatever that's worth," he'd finished.

"It also made you the kind of person who let me come on this trip," Klein had added significantly. "Hey yeah," Bridges had smiled, "I hadn't thought of that." Klein remembered how he'd used to think, as a child, that stealing from the rich to give to the poor hadn't been the same as what 'thou shalt not steal' had been for, that the context of it had made a difference somehow.

"What other kinds of beliefs do you have?" he'd asked. "I mean, you don't have to tell me if you'd rather not, but do you, like, believe in something?" Bridges had tilted his head. "Is this a sales pitch?" Klein had laughed. "No, I'm just curious. I've known people with all kinds of beliefs, I don't mind any of them really. I just get curious about the role their beliefs play in their lives sometimes. You don't have to tell me of course. It's not like you owe me anything." Bridges had smiled at him. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours," he'd jested. "I'm a Daoist," Klein had said. For the purposes of this conversation, he'd been a Daoist.

"Oh, cool!" Bridges had exclaimed excitedly. "Don't tell me you are too?" Klein had asked dubiously. He'd been willing to give Bridges the benefit of the doubt, but after what had happened with Boko, if someone else he'd run into in desperate circumstances had suddenly told him that he'd coincidentally shared the same beliefs as his all along, even after he had changed his answer from before, Klein had been going to have some serious questions. "Well... Yes and no, depending on what you mean." What an odd answer that had been. "What do you mean?" Klein had tilted his head at him.

"I believe in every religion, Klein," Bridges had simply said. "Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Voodoo, Islam, Daoism, even atheism, if you choose to think of it as one," he'd elaborated. "Sometimes I go through all of them successively in one day. Most of the time I just kind of have all of them at once." Klein's mind had somewhat boggled at this. "Don't you have to deal with a lot of contradictions between them?" Bridges had smirked at him. "Each and every one of those belief systems is already full of contradictions by itself. What difference does it make, for me to work around contradictions in all of them, rather than in just one?"

So Bridges would 'borrow' belief system after belief system, just as he would 'borrow' object after object before giving it back to a different person every time. Once, after Klein had settled in and gotten used to his duties for a while longer, Canon in D had come on the ship's radio while Klein and Bridges had been walking and talking side by side on the port deck of the ship. Klein had known people he'd liked who'd hated it, but he couldn't have described the expression that he'd seen appear on Bridges' whiskered face when they'd heard it coming on from the radio as anything other than completely enraptured.

"Oh, I love this song!" Bridges had smiled as if, after having been told by a doctor that he'd been going to die, the same doctor had suddenly announced to him that he'd made a mistake, and that Bridges had really been going to live after all. "It's the most beautiful thing in the world, don't you think?" he'd asked Klein. Klein had been kind of neutral on it, but Bridges' enthusiasm about it had been starting to prove communicative. Most of Bridges' moods were.

"It's like the music is telling us the only story ever told. See, when this part starts, it seems like it's only going to be this part, for this long. But then this other part comes in! It goes through some of the same trials and tribulations as the first part, but over it, sort of its own way. It starts just a bit later so you can see what's going to happen to it by listening to the first part, or it can remind you of what happened to the first part before while it's happening to the second one. Then this third part comes in! It's just like the first one. It'll never catch up to the first two but it doesn't matter because it's still trying to advance on its own terms, at its own pace..."

Bridges narrating Canon in D had sounded as involved as a boxing match announcer.

"... so by the time it gets to the end, it's the third part that's way in advance of the first two parts, because the first one is coming up to it right behind it! And the second one is all the way back at the beginning by that point. They all crisscross and intersect at all these different points so it's like they're aware of each other in some way, they're waving hello to each other when they're going past each other, but without ever getting in any of the other two's way! Somehow it all fits together like interlocking gears, like pieces of a puzzle that were always meant to fit together the way they did. Isn't it the most beautiful thing in the world, Klein?"

Klein had realized that he'd been moving his head to the music and humming by then.

"Don't you wish, Klein, that people, gods and objects all advanced and fitted together harmoniously like that...?" Bridges had asked him longingly.