FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Desperate times put plenty of people into a job that they didn't really want to work, but at the intersection of personal responsibility and swallowed pride, there were plenty of opportunities to work for minimum wage.

Firr didn't relish the idea of taking a job that paid so little, but in a down economy, he was willing to take what he could get his hands on, and the work carried a promise of interest, if nothing else.

"So, tell me again how this isn't just some weird case study that you guys are paying for my time with?"

"Not everyone is able to do what we need them to do," his new manager explained. "The reason the pay for this job is so low is because anyone can do the job, in theory...but it depends on if you've got the right stuff inside of you or not."

Such vague job descriptions were just the kind of thing that Firr was used to, but he expected to see that kind of description typed out on a flier somewhere, or on an official memo in an office cafeteria.

To literally hear someone spouting those words as if they were fact was more than a little off-putting.

"Could you maybe give me a more direct answer as to what I'll be doing here, exactly?"

"In the most literal sense? Nothing."

"...Okay, I am seriously reconsidering this position now. If you were willing to pay even a dollar above minimum wage, this would be a dream job for too many people, especially for this place to be so empty on the inside."

Entering a warehouse in a questionable, partially gentrified part of town didn't sit well with Firr as an idea in the first place, and the woman sitting at the receptionist desk in the front was almost stereotypically friendly and passive. Her entire presence was meant to make him feel a sense of comfort to offset the eerie atmosphere on the other side, and the creep factor didn't stop at the dim, low lights that allowed shadows to creep in from every corner of the small warehouse.

A series of cubicles were set up near the front, but it was only part of a row of similar arrangements. Unlike a proper office setup, these were small, self-contained environments, with each one simulating something that Firr had seen in the real world, and small doors on the outside contained each environment with a glass exterior.

"I understand why these observation units might give you the feeling of emptiness...without subjects inside to do research on, they look like a zoo without any animals in the exhibits, don't they?"

That answer did nothing to make him feel more comfortable.

"So, I'll be doing research on animals in these things?"

"That entirely depends on how you do on your first aptitude test."

"I thought I already took those...you know; as part of the process of getting this job."

"You've gotten your foot in the door of a very illustrious company, but you didn't actually bother reading the full title of your position, did you?"

Firr paused, wondering if he could pull the job title out of his ass on the spot. "Is it so bad if I didn't? I always figured that job titles were a lot less meaningless than the job I'd be doing, and the description mentioned research and analytics, so..."

"Well, other than the people working in the front on the marketing and R&D teams, everyone working on the warehouse floor is part of two very different teams...you could call them the 'boots on the ground' part of the R&D division."

"So they're the people you pay less, to do more of the work."

"You don't much seem to care for the idea of this job..."

"And you don't much seem to care about paying a fair wage for doing something that you probably can't, but I need to pay rent, and you need someone to work for you, so here we are."

"Quite right," his manager agreed, meeting the uproar in Firr's attitude with a chuckle. "In fact, I can't do some parts of the job, which is why I'm the hiring manager...but with any luck, you'll end up on the fun side of things here."

"You guys had me do all of those aptitude tests, and you don't even know what part of the company I'll be working in?"

"It's up to a coin flip, really. I sure hope luck is on your side; ready to head to your new office?"

Plenty of things weren't adding up, as far as Firr was concerned. The building was nicer and newer than any on the block, and he could accept that he hadn't been able to find much information about the Juxta Corporation online, given their rather infantile existence.

What was confusing was that they claimed to be a research and development company with a vague mission statement about improving the future, but they had very few examples of how they were going to go about that. Further still, they had individual, and all told, quality cubicles for their employees to work in, despite only offering them minimum wage payments.

Firr didn't believe for an instant that he'd be doing _nothing_all day at his job, but the sooner he sat down and familiarized himself with the work, the sooner he'd be able to determine just how true that statement could be.

"Sure," he finally replied, as if he needed to think about whether he wanted the job or not. "Which one of these is mine, exactly?"

"New hires always go in the front row...keeps you closer to management until they know that you can be trusted," the hiring manager explained; his eyes rolled as he explained the policy. "Trust me, it's a bit of a pain, but we all had to go through it at the start. If you can survive a few weeks in the first row, you'll be toward the back in no time, and you'll almost never see the management team as long as you stay on task."

"I thought my job was doing a whole lotta nothing, anyway?"

"That's how most of us treat it, anyway."

Now that Firr was officially on board, the hiring manager was acting like more of a real person, rather than a robot with only a handful of preprogrammed answers. Firr knew that it was all too common for people to put on a face when they didn't know for sure if someone could be trusted or not, especially when that information could make it back to their superior.

He was glad to see, however, that the man was capable of at least a little humor and personality.

"So, put on a brave face, look busy and stick it out for a few weeks," Firr suggested. "I think I can handle that."

"Trust me, it'll get a lot better once you make it into the back rows," he admitted. "And you'll be there before you know it."

"Mind if we go back there and check 'em out? I wanna see what my new digs might be."

"Actually," he paused, looking at his wristwatch, "We can't. They like us to keep orientation extremely short here, and we're already a couple minutes over the line. It's better back there, but it's awfully boring, really. You're not missing anything, and you'll be able to meet up with all of your new employees at break time."

"Figures," Firr groaned. "Well, I'd hate to get you in trouble, dude. Also...I don't think I ever caught your name."

"Scott Sloan," he introduced himself with an offered hand. A brief shake between the two was followed by Scott urging Firr toward the end of a long row of four attached cubicles. "Sorry if I forgot to introduce myself: I'm terrible with names, and I apologize in advance if I forget yours."

"Happens to me all the time," Firr agreed. "And this...whole row of four rooms is my office?"

"That's right! The motivation here at Juxta Corp is to help you feel natural in your working environment. Your first room is typical of a home office, but there's a simulated kitchen, simulated outdoors, and even a simulated basement for those of us who like to work in different places. It's an original concept, to the best of our knowledge...and all of our employees have given ringing endorsements to it!"

"Bet you guys would be able to pay us more if you spent less on the interior décor, but...this is pretty cool," Firr agreed. "Thanks again, Scott!"

The left side wall of the first room was just like a door into an office building, and as Firr stepped inside, he was greeted with the stagnant, pathetic attempt at mimicking a floral scent. The chair waiting at the desk inside looked as stereotypical as possible, from the old, squeaky wheels to the cushioning that looked so much thicker than it actually was.

Without a clue how to do his job and a mission to last long enough to get his first paycheck by pretending otherwise, Firr wheeled the chair back, plopped down in it and scooted forward. The PC waiting on the desk was already turned on, with a welcome screen displayed on the monitor.

The words "Hello, Firr" were blown up across the liquid crystal display, with warm, comforting colors illuminating the letters in a slow, rolling pattern. It was a dated font using dated graphics, which was disappointing from such a new, cutting edge company...but Firr wasn't there to be impressed with their sad attempt at a welcome wagon.

He was there to work, and as he shook the mouse at his desk, the screen saver ended its cycle.

"Okay...couple of icons I've never seen before..." Firr muttered. He was less than a minute into his day and already, he was slumped over his keyboard, chin in his palm, trying to figure out what to do get started for the morning. "And one specifically titled R&D program. At least they made it easy for me to find..."

There was nothing spectacular about double-clicking an icon on a computer screen, or the small hourglass popping up on the screen as Firr waited for the program to load. As long as he had that on the screen, he was sure that he'd be able to survive long enough to earn a first paycheck and look for a better job.

He didn't know how desperate the Juxta Corporation was for fresh talent, or how far they'd be willing to go to make sure he'd reconsider quitting after just one check.

"Please choose a username...huh. Okay."

His own inside joke of calling himself 'Polecat' wasn't the first mistake he'd made that day, but it proved to be the most grievous.

He added his typical password to the account, pressed 'enter,' and blinked as a mist emerged from the top of the computer screen. The cheap, floral scent was spraying right in his face from above the screen, but rather than offering a quick jet, there were several bursts of scent blasting him right in the face, until he couldn't get the artificial stink out of his nostrils.

The oil was dripping down his face in seconds. Frustration boiled over and made itself known as he threw the small cannister across the room, but when he tried to wipe some of the mess away from his cheeks, he recoiled in terrible pain.

"The hell?! When was the last time I trimmed my nails?"

He stopped just short of drawing blood from his cheek, but pulling his palm back revealed the extent of the growth: he wasn't the type to growing his nails out long in the first place, but they were already curling over the ends of his fingertips...and they weren't stopping there.

"So they put drugs in the aerosol sprayer," he groaned. "Great. Really funny, guys! Is this some kind of new person hazing thing?"

Firr thought he was prepared for the side effects that would follow being dosed with a massive amount of hallucinogenic drugs.

He was not prepared for the claws that grew from his fingers to suddenly disappear under emerging tufts of warm, orange-yellow fur.

"At least I get to enjoy my drug trip," Firr joked, as he turned his palm up to his face and watched as blisters appeared in a very specific pattern, right over the middle and base of his hand. He could already guess what they were supposed to imitate, but he was still convinced that they were just an imitation, created by the depths of his defiled mind.

That he could actually feel them against his own face as he pressed his palm against his injured cheek was more concerning than it was exciting.

"I'm...n-not high, am I?"

He whirled around in his chair immediately and looked out the window behind him. The fake cubicle setup was surrounded to the left and the back by tall, plain drywall, but to the right, through the three other parts of his personal office, he saw cameras emerging from every single nook and cranny, pointing right at the scratch marks on his face.

Those warm, red trails of injured scarlet were filling in with brightly striped fur...and pawpads were brushing through it, instead of the dexterous flesh of human fingertips.

The screen of the computer turned itself off as Firr whipped his head back the other way, and just on the other side of the glass, he saw Scott walking past the cubicle with a wide, eager grin on his face.

Firr couldn't hear the words, but he could read the lips of the hiring manager just well enough to get the point: "See? You won't have to do anything at all to collect your paycheck."

The lights in the simulated office flickered off, but as Firr sat there and tried to get a grip on the situation, he noticed that he wasn't having any trouble seeing. He felt an odd sharpness in the pits of his eyes, and for a moment, he wondered if he'd been sliced with a knife...but there was no assault to his face, save for the unusual spray.

Vertical slits were still forming in his irises, granting him a better ability to see in the darkness as the office around him was seemingly shut down.

"Gotta get to the door," he said, but even as the words left his mouth, he knew that the entrance to the office would be locked.

Foolish desperation left him grabbing at the handle with his slowly changing hands and yanking at the knob as hard as he could, but his expectations were met summarily as nothing budged.

"Shoulda done more research on that job listing..."

He shook the handle a few more times in desperation, but it all proved in vain. The longer he held on, the harder it became to keep a grip on the metal handle: his digits were shortening, and as his knuckles fused together, his flesh became thicker...but everything was shrinking back in perfect proportion as the door grew taller before his eyes.

His comfortable t-shirt became baggy, before it was nearly a sleeping bag on his smaller body. He didn't need the extra warmth as fluffy continued growing down from his wound, but the way it spread over his chest and moved across the rest of his torso didn't grant him any comfort.

There was a little too much warmth, but comfort was in short supply.

"Cameras have to have wires coming from them somewhere," Firr thought aloud, but his voice was already getting softer. He felt the higher vibrations moving along his vocal chords as his pitch changed against his will, and on closing his mouth, his incisors pressed against his lower lip, proving too large to fit in a human mouth any longer. "Gotta see if there's a gap in or out of this place that they forgot about!"

His tongue scraped across the roof of his mouth; it was an entirely human reaction to deep thought, but the bristles upon his once smooth flesh caught him by surprise. He stuck his tongue right out and tried to stare down at it, but the bridge of his nose was blocking his view and growing wider by the moment.

Firr already knew what he was becoming. The computer was actually pulling the wrong species from his username, but everything about his mannerisms was decidedly feline: from the way that he snapped his head on a swivel and looked over at the continuous spray of the mysterious gas, or the wiggle in his hips as he prepared to go after it, he could just imagine how much he looked like a house cat going after a thrown paper ball.

Seeing a cat in a home office, of course, wouldn't have been that far out of the ordinary.

"Not gonna let you make this any worse," he muttered, keeping his voice under his breath. Claws had disappeared under a field of fur, but they emerged once more on the call of instinct as he tried to spring forward.

His legs pushed, but as he dove forward, he felt completely off balance. His center of gravity was changing, and he hadn't stopped to think it over before trying an advanced maneuver.

Despite that, he caught himself on all fours, and put an entirely human spin on his increasingly feline form by rolling his eyes at the landing posture.

"Great...just great , really," he groaned. "You had the common decency to turn me into an animal, but not to give me the skills to use my new body?"

Speaking was getting harder every time that Firr opened his mouth: both from the new shape of his lips as his muzzle became fully formed, and the fact that his mind was becoming preoccupied with making another noise.

He pushed back on his hind legs as a new curve formed within them, and though it was clumsy, he sprung forward and swiped at the cannister with a flash of his claws, knocking it across the room.

What bothered him wasn't the fact that it was spraying again as it landed, but that he'd knocked it away from himself, just as he hoped to...and yet, his backside was wiggling as he jumped right through the neck of his shirt and emerged on the other side with the start of a tail popping up from the base of his spine.

He looked down to see his arms planted in front of him as though he'd been walking on all fours his whole life, but he was more preoccupied with his new toy than he was with the impressive speed of his transformation. The human aspect of his mind should have been bewildered to see something so incredible, but instead, feline stereotypes overwhelmed him...

...His entire body went stiff and bounced as his sensitive ears perked to the low hissssss of the spray in the corner.

"Other way. Run the other way!" he said, but there was nothing human in his voice anymore. The sound escaped as a quick bout of panicked mewling, and clumsy legs bounded the other way, moving through the gaps in the four individual cubicles.

He stopped on a dime when he arrived in the next area, seeing that he was in some kind of a back yard; both environments provided their own sense of danger, but clearly, Firr was an indoor cat. He took only the briefest trot around the artificial turf before knowing he preferred the safety and comfort of a home office, but there was one thing that kept him from rushing back.

Firr couldn't have known that the entire room was filled with the transformative gas before he ran into it, but he was just starting to get used to the feline body that he'd been trapped in.

He might have clung to it a little bit longer, if not for the familiar smells of fresh, juicy meat and barbecued coals wafting through the air.

"Whatever that is, I need to get some...completely forgot to get breakfast today!"

A human mind was proving no match for animal instincts, and the concern Firr was riddled with at the start of his change was starting to fade, even as the cameras beamed his progress to the rest of the company. Notes were being taken on his every move as his feline tail did something truly unusual.

It started wagging from side to side, rather than sticking up straight like it should have.

People that were subjected to the transforming spray didn't always take right away, and some people didn't take at all: those ones were trapped in the back of the warehouse to collect data on the successful transformations.

The Juxta Corporation was in the business of human augmentation, and they needed to run more than a few tests before their product was ready to hit the market...but they'd yet to find a strain that worked for all human blood types; further, they couldn't turn people back from a transformed animal into a human being.

Firr's new, incoming change toward a canine body was the first step toward a so-called cure. The money he was promised for his work at the company was hardly compensation enough, but direct deposits into his bank account and auto-paid bills would keep anyone from asking questions about his whereabouts.

They could keep him in those chambers and subject his body to as many tests as they wanted, for as long as they deemed it necessary.

"I don't understand, though...where's the grill? I don't see a grill."

A simulated sky of blue and grass of tall, plush green were starting to lose their meaning to Firr as he roamed across them. His feline paws were too dainty to go through much of the taller grasses, but they were growing thicker with each step he took, until the pads on his paws were heavy and calloused.

Claws that hid behind a coat of fur were pushing forward from his flesh and filling him with discomfort, but the aromatic call to his stomach overwhelmed his sense of pain: just like a proper puppy, his hunger for human food would lead him down all kinds of foolish paths.

Right at the moment, it was already leading him further across the small, simulated yard, toward a wall that he could no longer see. Colorblindness was overtaking his vision, and it was enough of a stark change to halt his forward progress, but the yard ended with an unusual drop into a dark, sinister looking place: human, feline and canine instincts could agree that he didn't really want to go down to whatever dark place was waiting for him there.

"Feels like I should be taller than this," Firr said, and humanity broke back through for a moment as he tried to stroke his chin in thought. There was a lot more of it to stroke, as his lower mandible began to expand and roll out, but his calloused pawpads felt painful against his own face...until the thickness of his skin began catching up with his new body.

Suddenly, he planted down on his rump, kicked his hind leg forward and started swiping it over the side of his face: with each pass of his duller, thicker claws over the side of his muzzle, the orange-yellow fur of the feline body faded, replaced with driving sheets of comforting brown.

"Is he caught between bodies, sir? He's still more feline than canine, but he's acting more like a dog than anything," Scott pointed out, as he sat in the real R&D division of the Juxta Corporation.

"He's well on his way to being a dog...it'll all make sense soon enough. Hopefully, we'll be able to move him into the third phase without any further complications."

"And then onto phase four?"

There were charts all over the walls with details of failed tests, and to those other people who had been conned into working for the twisted company, they were a reminder of how many human lives they'd ruined; thankfully, none had been taken yet.

Phase four was the promise of being able to return the human test subjects back to the body of homo-sapiens, and with any luck, the bodies that they arrived at the company with.

Scott was starting to wonder if there had ever been a genuine attempt to move a test subject into phase four, with the success rate sitting at a hope-smothering zero percent.

"He's moved from phase two to phase three quicker and easier than any other subject we've ever had. We don't want to rush him back into a human body until we've had more time to do our research..."

A steel door slammed down, cutting off the entrance to the simulated basement. Firr jumped up from scratching his cheek and whirled around on four thick, powerful canine paws, but his sense of alarm was quick to disperse when no immediate threats presented themselves.

As close as a dog could get to shrugging about something, he swallowed down a tiny ball of nerves and went back to panting as he stood in place, enjoying the scents of the false nature around him.

So...what the heck was I doing? Firr thought. Looking for food, right? I am pretty hungry...

Chocolate brown fur was spreading over his body in slow, rolling waves, changing not just the color, but the consistency of the coat that covered him. Long, bristly fur matted itself down and curled against his flesh as Firr left his brief stint as a feline in the past and started down the path to being a tall, proud Chesapeake Retriever.

He might have made it all the way into his new body, if not for something else mingling with the scent of the fake barbecue.

A skunk? Where is it? Lemme at it!

The computer finally connected the dots, introducing a final mutagen to the air and putting Firr on the path that his username set out for him in the first place.

It's getting closer. I can just tell that it's getting closer!

Firr whirled around, and on the camera, it looked adorable: anyone watching would have assumed that it was just footage of a dog chasing its own tail, and in reality, that wasn't far from the truth.

Just as soon as his tail lengthened out and coiled over with brown fur, however, a stripe of white erupted through the middle of it, and the foul odor surrounded Firr with such an overwhelming bouquet that it made him feel sick to his stomach.

The scent was oppressive, and it set off a new panic in the recently transformed canine. Learning to run in a third body that day, Firr did his best to bolt to the door: paws landed awkwardly and rolled around in the turf as he realized just how long his legs had become, but there wouldn't be any time, or any need to adjust to the canine form that he'd taken.

Just as he tried standing up on his hind legs and scratching at the steel door, he felt the weight of his wagging tail shifting yet again, until the lack of balance left him on his haunches once more.

Why won't they let me in? Don't they hear me scratching at the door?

There were plenty of little cues that Firr became quickly aware of, but the protests in his mind only emerged in a high-pitched, canine whimper as he sat near the door, surrounded by a scent that he was creating of his own volition. The change of his body from a canine shape to a mustelid form was one that it was never intended to handle...but as the researchers were quick to note, he was taking to his final form faster than the other two.

His backside was already lifting from the ground, and the lack of balance that came before was no longer an issue as he fell to all fours and tested his front legs against the turf.

These claws are a little shorter...these hands...paws? Feel a little easier to move on...I feel like I could turn on a dime!

Black fluff burst through the fields of shorter, brown curls and completely overtook the majestic coat of canine fur that once decorated him, but the panic that followed every moment of Firr's transformation was starting to fade, little by little. His human mind was being torn asunder by adjusting to so many new bodies so quickly, but as much as it was possible for a skunk to do...he was smiling.

"Time for him to shift from a canine to a mustelid documented at just over three minutes," Scott spoke into a handheld recorder as they observed the change from a remote location. The long, white stripe that only started at the tip of his tail was already running all the way up Firr's lower back and reaching toward his shoulders, and black fur was filling in the last gaps of brown that remained from his brief stint as a canine. "Looks like the coat is complete about...three and twenty?"

A tuft of white popped out between his ears as they shortened back to his head and sharpened, taking away the adorable flop of the puppy ears that he had before. The way he perceived sound in that state was different yet again, but somehow, he felt like he was the most comfortable with the noises he heard as he trotted around the yard with an unpracticed gait.

He'd have plenty of time to figure out how to talk on all fours more naturally than that, but for his first day, Firr had already put in more work than most company employees could pull off in a month...but he was more focused on Scott's original promise than he was about his rate of pay.

Getting paid to do a whole lotta nothing, he thought, as he trotted around the fake yard, slowly adjusting to the presence of his own scent. Could do a lot worse for a minimum wage gig!