FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"You never really notice the little things until they're gone.

The quiet hum of conversation on the street.

The familiar, comfortable thrum of cars passing by.

The electrical supply. There were no more electric lights; no more computers; no more radio signals. No more communication.

The water mains. Remember when you could fill up a glass, just like that?

You could compare... the state of this planet to a dead fur, in a way. Every fur's body is made of organs; the heart, the liver, the eyes, and so on... What happens when an essential organ fails? What happens when multiple fail at once?

I'll tell you.

The host dies.

But, even as the host dies, are there not components of that host which remain alive? Even in death, your fur will grow a little; your nails will lengthen. Bacteria remains and breeds as the host's body... degrades.

Even though you could class these bacteria as life, per se, they are not life in the same sense that the host was. They are something lesser. They will never reach the same glory the dead fur did. Even if they lived a life of mediocrity, the fact that they could independently function made them something special.

_It wasn't something that we appreciated enough back when we could have avoided this. _

We all took it for granted.

_It would be fair to say, then, that every person currently alive is a bacterium in the dead, rotting body of our planet. A pristine, shining gear in a useless engine. _

Each is life; each is alive, but they will never come together. They could not recreate what was lost.

The information that existed to create the past society simply doesn't exist any more."

• Writings of an Unknown Philosopher. Their body was never found; their work will never be discovered.

Nobody remembers what happened, exactly. Some have stories, others have theories, but, ultimately, we'll never truly know.

The world we must exist in is a grey, universally bleak place. It seems to be a never-ending grey, cold winter. The air was poisonous, sometimes. If you remained outside long enough, without thick enough clothing, you would fall ill with a disease that was not contagious. Your fur would fall out in clumps, and your body would simply give up. We called this sickness "radiation poisoning", but nobody could remember why, or what exactly "radiation" was, or where it came from.

Most furs were dead, now. It could be read in the few books which survive; they said the world had seven billion people at one time. A billion was such an impossibly large number, nobody could even begin to imagine it. Most furs were lucky - or, perhaps, not so lucky - to meet another fur once a week.

If you were lucky enough, 'pon a scavenging run, to discover a photo that hadn't been worn away, you would see a fantastical world. One so clean and bright you could hardly believe it was real. Furs clean and happy, neatly dressed with clean clothes. Breathtaking photos of an impossibly blue ocean, or foreign landmarks of old, long-since dismantled for materials or destroyed by time.

There were some who sincerely believed that these photos were not real. Such a thing could never have existed here, they claimed. They were fakes; created by the predecessors of this place to brighten their lives a little. To help them imagine that, at one time, things were better, and maybe they could be better again.

'History' was only a vague concept now, as was the idea of nation, or race. There were simply not enough furs left alive to maintain these constructs and pass down the stories. A good deal turned to savage banditry. Others tried to band together to survive; but, more often than not, that just made them a bigger target.

Alex was just a late teen - perhaps you could call him an adult in this world; furs died young - but he had necessarily developed a sense of savvy. His memories of his parents were blurry; he didn't particularly remember them. They weren't in his life now, though, and he had no hope of ever finding them - they were probably dead - so, why should he care about them? Genuine compassion in this world was worth its weight in gold. It shouldn't be wasted on the dead.

These thoughts were painful. They tugged at his heart, threatening to undo him; to unravel him to the ground and force him to accept the misery. You didn't survive this long, though, without being good at burying your feelings. Most times, to feel was to die.

It was a dreadful experience. Alex cut a bleak figure in a looted, stripped-bare, dark-but-not-lightless apartment room. This would have been a living room; there were doors to the side to other rooms which were equally stripped bare. Alex didn't know the purpose of multiple rooms; surely living in one was enough?

One thing was for sure, though. Once, someone had lived here, in this room. You could see the mostly worn-away decorations; indents in the floor where furniture once must have been. A painting, nailed to the wall, had survived some of the damage; you could make out the text "live", a couple other words, lost to time - and on the other side of the rectangular canvas, you could see the word "love". Alex didn't recognize the words.

He didn't know how to read.

The entire building had begun to rot long ago, and had been partially looted before that. There were a few places that hadn't been ransacked here. This town didn't have too many people to begin with, and it was a few days' walk from the next one. It was only reasonable that it wouldn't have been completely stripped bare. There weren't enough people left alive to consume all of the supplies that the previous inhabitants... left behind.

One thing that these mysterious precursors did well was they stored a lot of long-lasting food; they must have done something to the food inside the tins for it to remain edible for too long, and yet after all this time they still taste fresh (well, as 'fresh' as tinned food got, anyway...) now. You could find them everywhere; with fancy labels of smiling furs and delicious food. A good deal of them had been taken, of course, but so few people remained now, it was possible to get your hands on enough food to survive with a day's worth of scavenging. It didn't bear for Alex to think about how much longer this'd be the case.

He had learned to differentiate these tins based on the graphic on the label; usually but not always the contents were the focal point of the image. Alex sometimes wondered what the point was. He knew that these weird symbols that he kept seeing everywhere had something to do with the contents, but as most of his time was taken up by surviving he never really took the time to learn.

Anything.

He was thoroughly uneducated on most things; he did not know about the solar system, the times tables, or even basic maths beyond holding things in memory and using paw-fingers to count. He did not know the periodic table; could not drive a car. He had never seen a plane or boat in his entire life. He had not ever made or received a phone call; he did not even know what a phone was, or what one looked like. The idea of any communication except physical was thoroughly alien to him.

He knew how to gut a fish; he vaguely remembers how to fire and maintain a gun. He can navigate with a compass or even from the north star - he had good eyesight - but could not pick out constellations; he did not know the name of the Sun except for "warm daytime thing", and the moon except for "cold, night-time thing". He could not read a map, but he can clearly remember and navigate to places that he's been.

In other words, his skill set was widely focused towards surviving. And that he did.

He looked... raggedy. His fur was a little dirty, and he gave off the aura of the kind of person who has spent almost all of their life outside, in the elements. He wore scavenged clothes; sometimes you would be lucky to come across a wardrobe that the moths didn't get to. He wore... some kind of trainer-shoe. The colour had long since faded, but it was of sturdy construction - despite all the abuse they have had endured over the years, they are still relatively comfy. Above, he was wearing baggy grey cargo pants that had a small rip on the right knee, which Alex had covered up by wrapping fabric around his fur, so it wasn't exposed to the elements. His pockets had various survival equipment inside; a Swiss Army knife, a compass, a meager portion of gauze - enough to staunch the bleeding from a minor wound.

He wore a heavy, thick jacket above that, which extended about to his waist. It had a heavy, warm hood and was waterproof. It was Alex's prized possession. Beneath that was a simple dirty white T-shirt. He hadn't cleaned his clothes in a while; he hadn't cleaned himself in a while; dog simply didn't have an opportunity to. He could use a shower, or... bath. Showers didn't exist anymore.

On his back lay his backpack. It was large and heavy affair; it had a triangular metal bar at the bottom of it which supported the back. It once must have had some webbing attached to its exterior to hold more stuff, but they had worn away before Alex had found it. It was mostly filled with supplies; there was a side section which contained a knife, in-scabbard. He had various other supplies in there; a few days' worth of tinned food. It didn't taste particularly good, but it kept him alive.

He just stood there; staring into the wall as he processed... something. He couldn't quite put his finger on what, exactly, he was thinking about. He felt... melancholy? Like something special had been lost, which didn't return. It was a weird feeling, one that made him uncomfortable. This entire building made him feel like this.

He turned around to face a frame which once contained a door. It led into a small hallway which, immediately to the left, were the stairs downwards. They were a straight series of steps with various rocks, needles and graffiti on the walls. Slightly further in to the hallway were the stairs upward. Further to the left were the other apartments; the right-hand side of the door was just entrances to apartments. Some had doors, some were hanging from one of the hinges; others were lying on the floor. Some didn't have doors at all.

In one apartment, it's clear that someone had cut up the door and arranged it to form a fireplace. You could see the ashes, no doubt from days or weeks previous. They were stone cold.

Alex wandered down the stairs, small pieces of broken concrete - Alex thought concrete was a type of rock - cracking and giving way underneath his shoe. He wanted to leave this place; to go far away from it and to not return. He had once heard that these rotten buildings were dangerous; that spending too long inside one would cause you to fall ill, years later. The man was old, very old... Perhaps in his thirties. To live to be thirty! Alex didn't think it possible.

---

A cold, stinging wind was the first thing that he felt upon leaving the building. He was faced with what could only be described as an alleyway of ruin; rusted-brown cars sitting on the sides of the streets, some buildings were looted husks; with their furniture and doors removed for firewood winters upon winters ago. Others were intact; some even still had a few unbroken windows. The whole place was covered with this... oppressive atmosphere in misery.

It got into your head.

It felt... like... Hm, how to explain it?

On a good day, in the right state of mind, you could picture what it must have looked like to live here. Buildings full; lights on - although, Alex didn't know what modern electric lights even looked like -, furs inside, laughing, playing. Living easy.

That's what Alex thought of it, he realized. The place was a... reminder of a stolen, easy life. He had once desperately dreamed to wake up tomorrow into the 'easy time', which is what Alex had come to call it. Where things were warm, and you didn't worry about if someone would try to kill you or not. Where these... metal things that took you places would work, and you could scavenge and forage and farm and hunt and build in peace, on a planet that wasn't completely fucked.

Such a dream was painful. It was unnecessary. It made life harder.

As crushing as it was... He had to give up on it. That was years ago, now. He didn't smile anymore. Just trudged forward with a blank-ish look upon his face. Feeling was painful. It was best not to feel; as difficult as that sounded. Trying to ignore the constant, overwhelming bitterness that ... life itself ... had been stolen from you; that you had been reduced to live this way, like a scavenging beast - that things used to be and ought to be BETTER, damn it! He could feel it in his bones.

He looked to the road ahead with a weary look on his face. He was looking for... something. A meaning, perhaps.