Part II – The Chromosomal Blade went Snicker Snack
#2 of Moral Obsolescence and Motor Oil
Warning: Contains M/F furry yiff. I don't normally write in this area, but this story is for a friend. Do not read if your underage, because society will fragment and we'll be running around with datajacks in our furry skulls Yadda Yadda. Part II of my homage to 1980's Cyperpunk. Please note I'm emulating everything about the genre here, including its criticisms: the shallowness, the sexism, right down to its inherent nihilism. Please rate accordingly. Basil is copyright his player, NautaCeta. Selected Lyrics from the FLA song: Decsention, are copyright 2006 Metropolis records, used without permission.
Moral Obsolescence and Motor Oil
Part II - The Chromosomal Blade went Snicker Snack
2006 by Eldyran
Far away from contaminated Ground Zero and western edge of Glow City's dilapidated sprawl, the galvanic pulse of its downtown throbbed with ferocious, resistive zeal. The sheer translucence of its florescent streetlights, monolithic towers, and massive, ever changing neon advertisements shoved back the oppressive, Acheronian rainstorm and its corrosive tears. Periodic gouts of blue methane flame burst from countless exhaust stacks, scorching the vortex of polluted sky above. The bright eyes of thousands of ground transports slid tirelessly through cracked lines in the metroplex's skin, and the constant whine of nimble aerodynes filled its airspace, their blinking running lights bouncing off the hard exteriors of the city's numerous, darkened structures.
One such structure illuminated the black and neon purple fence of overcast above more than than the rest. Shaped like a pyramid of Egyptian old, ebon in color, the brilliant tip of its peak shot a ray of light so intense it burned its way through the swirling tempest above. Pentapulses of information beamed along the path of pulsing bluish white light, communicating to the Atum Military Research Corporation's primary communications satellite stationed directly above in geosynchronous orbit.
Patterned after the Luxor of Old American Vegas, real obsidian comprised the Arcology's dermis, protected with a thin layer of corrosive resistant silicon. Tributes to the ancient pantheon of Gods and Goddesses adorned the flat slants of the pyramid's exterior, their contemptuous faces staring down at the rest of populace below. The initial cost of the Arcology had been astronomical, but the AMR corporation could afford such luxuries. After all, for a mercenary corporation like AMR, war was a business.
And as of late, business was good.
Aside from some of the executive offices near the top of the pyramid, most of its lower level, tinted windows were darkened. Despite the lateness of the hour, a mid level window facing the south west blazed with restless activity. Inside, a digital torrent of three dimensional images and multi-channel sound bounced off the walls of the luxurious condo from multiple holo-vid feeds. The haunting electro-industrial of vintage Front Line Assembly overlay the auditory chaos, a throwback to Old Canada's culture shock of the 1980's. The incessant chatter and ambient noise of various NewsWire feeds, stock updates, and AMR intelligence reports overcame one of the condo's two occupants, and she found herself lost in a maelstrom of sensory overload and sensation.
Her black and white fur dripped sweat into her eyes, the salt stinging her corneas. She threw her head back into the silicon gel pillow and closed her eyes, grateful for the partial reprieve from the rape of her perceptions. The sylphlike skunk pulled her slender thighs in tighter next to her abs, her ankles spread high in the air. The skoon between her legs gripped her knees tight in his strong paws as his hard, sweaty form bucked against her hips, his rigid sex slipping in and out of her slick cunt in steady rhythm.
As the skunk tore at her affections of chrome and lace, the skoon's tight abs flexed with each deep thrust, his muscular thighs bulging hard. Her passionate cries washed over him, and his florescent purple irises focused down on her a moment, curious. He seemed lost thought, concentrating on the perplexing, primal vocalizations of the female pinned underneath him.
In actuality, it was just one of a myriad of thoughts coursing through his hyperbolic mind. The neurons of his cerebrum fired ten times as often, in a more organized pattern of biological chaos, than the creature speared underneath. Despite the audio and visual pandemonium that rampaged throughout the condo room, he deftly separated out every single input from the tsunami of sensory feeds with little effort.
"In off world colony news the AMR corporation's lunar mass driver incepted another 1km diameter asteroid from the Mars Colony three hours ago, marking the third in this month alone. According to inter-sol reports, radical Mennonite extremists have retained control of Mars colony since their initial assault two months ago ..."
" ... stocks on the Nikkei average closed higher today with the announced merger of Weyland Industries and the Yutani Corporation. While this boosts economic forecasts for the ailing Japanese industrial sector, the Indo-American Corporate conglomerate Wal-Mart has expressed interest in acquiring the new heavy industrial giant at some unspecified point in the future ..."
"... internal agents detected subtle changes in the black market new-yen three hours ago. Currency flow seems to suggest that a major global push to reconcile recent conflicts between the East Indonesian Traids may be forming. Contacts within our Yakuza partners have made no comment thus far ..."
A thousand inflections of thought passed through the mind of the skunk / raccoon hybrid, merging seamlessly with the myriad of rich physical sensations coursing through his gene spliced body. Sweat dripped from his feathered black and white striped head fur, the salty drops splattering on the lace stockings of the whore underneath him. His thrusts slowed a moment, before his paw shot out and grabbed the skunk's head fur. When he yanked back, the whore screamed in pain. After a moment, however, her anguished screams turned into wails of masochistic delight.
"Look at me while I'm fucking you ... Rose ..." the skoon commanded, as the purple florescence oh his irises blazed with intense ethereal flame. Rose opened her trembling pink eyes and looked up to him, her muzzle quivering slightly.
"Please ... Basil ... don't stop!"
Basil leaned back, satisfied, and his teeth gritted when his hips bucked into hers, his black sex spearing, filling her. His black and white ringed tail twitched with each savage thrust of his tight glutes, and one of Rose's black paws shot up to the hybrid's toned left pectoral, the artificial claw of her metallic left pinky tip scraping across the tight nub of his nipple. Basil's other paw gripped her curvy hip, using it to support himself as he leaned back in a final series of thrusts. As a growl escaped his muzzle lips, his hot seed splashed inside Rose's fleshy womb. The female skunk shrieked out as the ridged muscular walls of her sex clamped down on his slick member, her large, furry breasts gyrating slightly from her intense climax.
She collapsed back into the sweat soaked purple sheets, exhausted. Her deep pants brought the curious scrutiny of the skoon, who, although covered in a light sheen of sweat, seemed to breathe at a steady pace with little exertion. He noticed her fatigue, her frailness, and scraped a claw gently up her cheek, where a few wrinkles appeared under the ripples of fur there.
Rose. So pink. So delicate. And starting to wilt.
With a sudden growl he picked her up, spinning her over on her chest and knees. Her pink eyes widened as he plunged deep within her again, and a loud groan escaped the skunk's pink lips as he continued his savage assault on her sex, so slick and still overflowing with his slippery cum. The excess of his previous six climaxes dribbled down the silky fur of her thighs, pooling in some spots on the purple sheets. The skoon hilted her again and again from behind, his hybrid cock spreading her wide with each hard thrust.
His deft, nimble paw reached underneath her hips, until it found the hard button of her clit, and stroked it without quarter. Rose shook, her moans going up an octave before breaking in a shrill shriek of orgasm. Basil's hips pistoned in and out of her, his head thrown back in growl as the familiar pressure built up deep withing him. The skoon pushed on, driving, stroking, molesting her body without mercy, and two more orgasms washed over her before he pulled out abruptly. Rose turned in time to watch Basil's cock jump and jerk on her lower back, spurting his musky cream all over her, until the deluge from his furry sacs ceased. The female skunk collapsed into the sheets in a swoon, her exhausted eyes closed for the time being.
Basil watched her snooze for a few, fleeting moments before he slid off the bed and sauntered across the room, empty wrappers of Stuff-It snacks crinkling under his hind paws. His roomy condo could entertain entire parties, but most of the time he lived a solitary, quiet life in his plush abode. The decor and furniture within seemed more styled for a sim-sense star than a soldier of fortune, but the Procyon in Basil could not resist the flash and glitter of the outside world.
A gilded, digital world of much style, but little substance.
"Max," Basil said as he strode naked to the only room window, his purple collar and ID tag bouncing lightly against his slender chest, "Kill all external feeds, lower internal music feed twenty decibels." The holographic head and upper torso of a lion replaced the external feeds, the face and muzzle comprised of only a few hundred polygons, and his mane almost plastic looking in nature. The lion adjusted the black tie of his matching black and white vinyl suit.
"J-j-just twenty decibels? What are you trying to do, give MTV4 a run for their money? It's so noisy in here I can hardly re-re-rez myself. Let me guess, silence not your fortissimo?" Basil leaned up against the tinted window and looked out beyond the darkness outside to the unrelenting rain.
"Real cute Max. Login and check my voice messages," Basil said, already bored with the melancholy view, and pushed a thumb tip to the terminus next to him by the window. The room analyzed the thumb print on the light blue electronic display, before connecting to the AMR communications mainframe.
[Begin Login Protocol: Identification ... Accepted]
[User: Basil Sabian Raies]
[Species: Procyon Mephitidae]
[AMR Identification Code: GEH-22-45-039]
[DOB: 2010-04-16]
[Current Date: 2036-03-09]
[Current Time: 02:12 + 00:20 PST]
[Room Temperature: 18 degrees centigrade, optimal for primary occupant]
"Retrieving user messages, approx-approx-approximate retrieval time, 3 seconds." The lion stated, his muzzle jerking with a visual stutter.
Basil's purple eyes burned with loathsome impatience. Three seconds. For his gene-spliced, enhanced brain, which processed information at ten times the rate of any other, the ensuing void of interaction was an eternity borne in tedium. To him, the meat world lumbered forward at a dinosaur's pace. When most were learning to drive their first hover car, Basil carried an entire armory across his back, and fought along side guerrilla's in the VSA conflict. He'd seen things others wouldn't believe. Fast attack destroyers on fire, adrift within the Sol asteroid belt, the Mennonite's C-beams glittering off the iridium dust there.
And that was only two months ago. Still, the time between operations bore into him. He should not suffer to remain idle. Idle things became obsolete. Obsolete things were disused. Disused things were throw away. AMR gave him life, a purpose. He was the genetic jabberwocky.
Chimerical in Appearance. Perfect by Design. Lethal of Nature.
His reflexes, stamina, and intelligence far surpassed any construct of nature's haphazard design. Trained in virtually every known firearm, paw to paw combat style, and combat spell known, he became the Universal Soldier. His exorbitant metabolism could break down any organic matter, even inorganic silicon, to fuel his unexcelled magical abilities. He required no mental downtime, as a deep, meditative trance replaced vital neuro-chemicals, doing in thirty minutes what it would take others eight hours.
Basil forced himself to sleep a few times. He found his dreamless REM state to be a waste of time, and preferred to go down to the shooting range or gym instead. There was a few occasions however, during random, idle times, that Basil experienced waking dreams. They never exceeded ten seconds or more in length, and seemed more akin to visions or disjointed memories not his own. He never reported them to Dr. Edgemar, as any abnormality in his intended function might end in premature 'retirement'.
Still, despite everything, he longed to leave the oppressive, radiated glow of Davenport, to rest under a blue sky, where a yellow sun still shined. Maybe someplace by the ocean, and next to a palm tree tree or two. Perhaps what he really longed for was a greater purpose. What that purpose might be he could not fathom, anything to replace the ache of emptiness deep within his belly.
"Retrieval c-c-complete. You have two ... c-c-count them two ... messages since your last login. My. Aren't you popular?" Max quipped.
"Playback." Basil said, running a pawtip over the polarized glass in front of him. The glass rippled with mana, before clearing. The unmuted, neon advertisements of the outside world played across his fur, and for a brief moment, he found reprieve in the flashing, multicolored rave. With a musical, almost crystalline chime, the first message began playback.
"Mr. Raies, this is Dr. Edgemar. There seems to be a irregularity in your last monthly physical. We detected elevated levels of sodium and palmitic acid in your last urinalysis. You're not eating bacon again are you? May I remind you that pig by products are highly illegal in most ..."
"Next message, Max." Basil sighed, and lost interest in the dance of rainbow colors in his fur. He tapped on the window and it opaqued. Another chime. The feminine voice startled him with an unexpected purr.
_Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?_
Basil's brow furrowed and the skoon shook his head. What a strange message. Where had he heard that unmistakable, feline voice before? Before he could ask Max to trace the origin of the creepy call, the hologram spoke up.
"Alert: Incoming vid-com from Mr. Yohanson. S-s-shall I tell him to pry the brick out from underneath his tail?"
"No, thats quite alright, Max," Basil said with a slight smirk, "pickup on this terminus." Basil turned his head to face the display panel, and a dingo dressed in a cheap robin blue business suit appeared on the vid-screen. When he spoke, his words slipped out of his muzzle with a corporate hiss; his Australian accent unmistakable.
"G'day Mr. Raies! I lobbed in to see how my little bitzer was doing ..."
"What do you want Mr. Yohanson?" Basil shot back in impatience.
"Holy dooley! No sense in beating around the bush with you is 'ere? Very well ... we need you to retrieve a disk for AMR. Seems a galah who used to work for us stole some valuable paydata from our R&D. We want you to fossick though his place and bring it back."
"I'm not your Gopher, Mr. Yohanson." Basil retorted, annoyed. "Simple B&R is a waste of my time, and I certainly don't take orders from junior executives." Basil's paw started toward the 'terminate call' function.
"My aren't we a figjam tonight?" the corporate sleaze growled, "Ahh Ahh Ahh there Mr. Raies, touch that button and I'll instigate protocol 9732 ..." Basil's paw froze, paw tips trembling only an inch from the button. AMR placed a subtle line of genetic code in each Genetically Engineered Hybrid, or GEH, their little insurance policy to ensure total loyalty and subservience into their creations. Upon a spoken command phrase, Protocol 9732 forced nerve paralysis deep within their brain stem.
Death was almost instantaneous, however punctuated with inhumane agony for those few brief moments. Those moments must have been long enough, as witnesses to the protocol remarked that the GEH embraced the end consequence. Basil's paw shrank back from the control panel.
"Now there, there's a smart lad," the dingo said as he gave a half sneer, "now be a good digger, and give it a burl will ya? The holo-disk we're looking for is labeled 'Simulation and Simulacra'." Basil's hybrid frame burst into purple flame, his outrage barely contained.
"Dr. Tyrell will hear about this ..." Basil growled out through gritted teeth, the florescence of his purple eyes going up several orders of lumen. Tyrell, for all real purposes, was his adopted father, and a senior Atum executive in charge of Project SETH.
"Ah I'm sure he will," the dingo grinned back, flashing a bit of his fangs, "but alas the tall poppy is still on his emergency business trip to Indonesia. So until then, you get to be my personal Bunyip. I'm sending you the address of the place now, and don't get into a bingle on the way there, it costs bikkies to make another one of you bitzers ..."
Basil slammed his paw down on the 'terminate call' button, the image of the smug dingo blinking out before him. After giving the middle claw to the dead screen, Basil fished through the clothes on the floor near his bed, and threw on a pair of black synthetic leather pants with matching open neck vest
"Max, I don't like this," he said while pulling a few medium pistols out of a weapons locker, "transfer yourself to my personal iMod, I might need you on this one."
"H-h-hey, your wish is my ALT-BREAK-Command." the simulation replied, and the A.I. lion de-rezzed from the holo-vid feed, downloading himself directly to the portable media device on Basil's hip. After holstering his guns, Basil took out his favorite weapon, a combat knife with a glass blade, and held it up to the light, a fountain of color splashing across his room. As purple tendrils of mana coursed through his right wrist up around the blade, he sliced out to a obsidian statue of Seth before him. The silicon atoms of the blade restructured in mid swing, forming a mana reinforced mono-molecular edge.
Basil swung down through the dense sculpture as if it was mere vapor, and resheathed the seemingly frail weapon in one deft kata. The top half of the art piece slipped an inch with a deep grate of stone on stone, before toppling over completely. He turned and without saying a word to the female skunk asleep on his bed, walked through the closed glass doors of his condo. The surface of the glass continued to ripple with his metaphysical passage as he stormed down to the parking garage, three hundred stories below. Rose smiled as he left and fully opened her pink eyes.
Neat trick.
Just like her sister.
Rose stretched in the still sweaty sheets and bounded off the bed to the terminus by the window. She punched in a vid-com number and after a few moments, the dingo appeared again.
"You know what to do," the dingo leered, dropping the ethnic slang for the moment. "Follow him till me makes contact with the last surviving member of the Steel Lynx. I want all loose ends tied up before this night is over with. No one must ever know about Project SETH. Are we clear on this?"
"Roga' Mr. Y," the assassin skunk grinned back, "I don't think number 39 will give me much trouble. They' all seem to find out the hard way that every Rose has its thorn ..."
A few minutes later Basil's Yamaha speedcycle thundered through the Arcology's parking ramp entrance, the tires squealing as he pealed east bound on the crammed, wet downtown streets. He swerved through the jam of ground transports, running traffic signals, even sliding under a semi-transport to bypass a slow lane, sparks flying as the metallic chassis of the bike scraped the cracked asphalt. Despite the booming of FLA through his iMod earphones, Max stuttered and roared out his desire for self-preservation. Basil gunned the engine after righting the bike, blowing past everyone else, boiling rage still coursing through him.
Let my DNA (Blood!) run through your mind
Let my DNA (Hate!) destroy all furkind
Out on the freeways heading to the east suburbs, the clutter of ground traffic thinned out a bit. Basil kicked the bike into highest gear and jammed the throttle, and the machine thundered to life underneath him. He red lined its RPM, hurling himself forward at over 280 kph. The lights along the freeway zipped by in quick, rhythmical flashes, and when combined with the steady bee drone of the bike's tires on wet asphalt, lured Basil into a zen-like trance of blinding speed and adrenaline.
Give me shelter from the pain
As this hate drives me insane
Seeking refuge from the rain
As downtown's towers of metal and silicon receded fast in the distance behind him, the rush of oncoming air whipped his fur and clothes into a frenzy, corrosive rain pelting his one piece shades. He pressed the precision machine to its limits; the white hot pistons denaturing the synthetic oil within their searing chambers. Unlike him, machines were created for the sole purpose of their own inevitable replacement.
All in all we do believe
As we try to conceive
In this glowing afterlife
Basil couldn't hear the whine of the aerodyne behind him, but saw its flashing blue and red strobes in his rear view mirrors. As the PD traffic watchdog in the sky pulled in closer and shot a spotlight on Basil, the AMR transponder in his bike barked back at it. After a few seconds, the alternating blue and red strobes kicked off, and the aerodyne pealed away, its exhaust tailpipe tucked between its turbines. Basil leaned into an offramp to one of Glow City's few middle class suburbs, and slowed down. The volatile mixture of fury and adrenaline dissipated, and the emptiness returned to the pit of his belly in full measure.
Basil slipped through the side streets of the small, quiet suburb, rolling past sleeping prefabricated homes, differentiated only by their paint scheme. Aside from the clicking of the bike's red-hot engine and the sizzle of rain on its searing block, the neighborhood was dead quiet. Max directed Basil to the appropriate address, and he ditched his bike behind a row of hedges a few blocks up. The skoon scampered from shadow to shadow, listening, watching for any rent-a-cop patrols along the streets. Basil dashed low to the back of the split bungalow, and slid along its side to a window. After a quick peek inside, the hyrbid dived through the glass, and shot to his hind feet in an agile tumble.
The window solidified behind his wake, leaving no trace of his felonious entrance.
The skoon mercenary made his way through the dark rooms of the apartment, alert and on guard, using the Procyon's natural low light vision to guide his passage. He paused when he came to the den. Pictures adorned the walls: of helicopters and tanks, males and females in uniforms, makeshift mechanic depots. Basil's jaw dropped, and he went up to one of the pictures, touching the glass with a trembling paw. A personal history of the VSA conflicted panned out before him, but they weren't someone else's memories.
These were his own.
But how could they? He never took those pictures, yet that village with the new water well, that depot whose tool tent blew away in a freak storm, these were all things he remembered. Only the memories of the furs in uniform seemed hazy in his razor sharp mind. What was going on? He sniffed the air, the fur on the back of neck now raised.
A male raccoon. A female skunk. The faintest scents. But wait, the skunk's scent ... Rose! The skoon shook his head, trying to clear the confusion. What was Rose doing here early yesterday morning? He sniffed again. A wolf who reeked of sushi and crime. A tiger who ...
She was beautiful, her fur orange and black, her huge, muscled body rippling with matching orange flame. His paws, now so slight and feminine, and more like a skunks, ran up her taught stomach to cup one of the tiger's soft, feline breasts. Basil / the skunk touched her lips to the tiger's own, a deep purr of feline arousal rumbling from her huge chest.
Basil blinked. He looked down at his paws, now masculine with their familiar hybrid shape. Another waking dream. He thought back to the creepy vid-com call back at his condo, to the eerily familiar voice he could not place. Who was this tiger? Why was she stalking him? Too many questions swam through Basil's mind, and he felt dizzy. He placed a paw on his forehead, trying to stabilize himself, when he caught another scent.
A coyote. But this scent wasn't old, in fact, it grew stronger with each passing second, as if ...
Like lightning, Basil's right paw flew to his holster and he snapped the barrel of his medium pistol behind him. He whirled around, his left wrist and paw engulfed in a purple swirl of pyrotechnics. The skoon froze when a Glock leveled itself between his eyes, the muzzle only a few scant millimeters from his hybrid nose. The repugnant odor of old gun oil overwhelmed his enhanced senses.
Too little, too late.
The stocky coyote in a beat up military poncho growled at him, his teeth white against his snarling muzzle lips. A metal paw clamped tight around the 9mm's molded grip, the aim experienced and sure. The muzzle of Basil's own AMR medium pistol pressed tight against the fur of the canine's forehead. The fireball in Basil's paw crackled and spat, bathing them both in a dancing, ethereal, purple hue. They stood there, locked in place, staring each other down. Neither of them made the slightest movement.
Standoff.
~ Fin Part II ~
The plot thickens. How is Basil connected to the death of Kylson's squad leader from the VSA conflict? Who is the mysterious tiger who haunts Basil's visions? What is Project SETH, and why is the megacorp AMR trying to cover it up? All this and more, when the shadows of Glow City recede even further in Part III: Writing Zero's into the Liability Matrix.
Congratulations are in order if you missed the blatant 1980's cyberpunk cultural easter eggs sprinkled in throughout the story. A Winner is You!