Portals - Chapter 1
Portals
by Rune
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Chapter 1
This is the beginning of an erotic fiction that will eventually have the wierdest sex scenes I've written to-date. Nothing but plot here, but to me, erotica without a proper introduction is like sex without foreplay.
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[Volunteers needed for live-in clinical trial of sexual biomedical device] [Only healthy adults 18-40 need apply] [Uncyberized individuals preferred] [Room, board, 15K/day] [[email protected]]
No.
No fucking way.
Everything about the posting was sketchy. Sure, it looked neat and clinical with black-and-white being the color scheme of the holomenus of the library's public computers, but all the clues were there.
"Biomedical" was a buzzword to make it sound legit, but it could be applied to just about anything. "Sexual device" to appeal to young, horny guys who would probably get the false impression it would be fun... when it probably involved a needle up the dick and electrodes in the ass to take measurements, maybe even surgical implants. "Uncyberized individuals" were usually the poor and half-starved homeless, to whom several days or weeks of guaranteed "Room, board" was what they were desperately after. "15K/day" worked out to minumum wage, and was only there to give the impression the corp wasn't just playing in food for unrestricted access to the most intimate regions of their bodies...
Growl...
The rat looked down at his aching belly, his dirty, tattered black shirt fluttering in the muscle spasms. Its yellow track stripes had run out of power long ago and no longer glowed, their darkness blending into the shirt's black weave.
Yes, there was food, but no... it's not fucking worth it. We can do better than this!
He looked back up at the white clouds of transparent holomenus surrounding the stool, a grid of more stools surrounding him, each a public computer terminal with the computer and holo emitter tucked safely out of reach of vandals, probably in the floor or ceiling. He poked at a few of them with his hands, positioning them to read, tossing more sketchy postings away, where they vanished as they passed outside the range of the computer's holo emitters.
Growl!
No.
The posting was clearly carefully crafted to appeal to homeless guys just like him. It was a trap, and he wasn't going to fall for it.
He felt his ears lower and brow tighten as he focused opened the next holobox of postings, his crimson eyes, glinting lip stud, and white nose and muzzletip reflecting in the stack of shimmering translucent white holomenus. He shoved other holomenus aside with a wave of his scruffy palefurred arms... his fur had been sweet-smelling and well-kept back when he had a job... back when he had an officefur's salary and could afford nice things like the intricate tribal tats dyed into the fur of his right arm...
Growl!!!
"Dammit!" he shouted down at his stomach, "No! We are not degrading ourselves for food! Zip it!"
The coyote guy who hadn't bathed in days, and the feline girl in clothes obviously from dumpster-diving sat on the stools on either side of him, and stared through their own clouds of plain, white holomenus.
Yeah, look at the crazy rat. He felt his cheeks redden under his fur, and his pale fur would make even the slightest blush stand out.
Fuming with his furless tail sunk so low around the stool its tip brushed his baggy pants with white fur poking out holes in the knees, he grabbed the stack of holomenus and splattered the next set of postings in a cloud in front of him.
First, the postings with bad grammar and bad spelling were flung away and disappeared.
Anything with all caps or too many exclamation points followed.
GROWL!!!
"Shut the fuck up!" he yelled down at his aching stomach.
Growl... his belly answered.
"We're better than this," he turned and grabbed the holomenu with the medical testing post between his thumb and forefinger, shaking it emphatically, "It's not worth it..."
"[email protected].." had the air of a legit corp. It wasn't someone's personal name or some odd name like a sketchy start-up...
"No!" he flung the thought away along with the holomenu.
Turning away and planting his bare paws firmly on the ragged carpet, he plucked through more holomenus in the new cloud.
Postings with walls of text went next. Anything with any obvious signs of sketchyness followed...
All the holomenus flashed and beeped.
"Not yet!" he said at no one in particular.
An otter in a frumpy jacket glided closer like a vulchre.
His 30-minute turn with the public computer was nearly up.
Under the staring eyes of the otter, in the remaining 60 seconds, he frantically piled all the holomenus together with sweeps of his arms. With mere seconds to spare, he tapped open a command menu and punched [Save Session]
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"Ugh!" he wrinkled his muzzle at the smelly mass of plastic his hands pulled out of the dumpster. Cheap Indian food always had the smell of synthetic plant fibers and artificially overspicy sauce. As with most leftovers, what remained was 90% sauce and 10% real food. Though, he'd learned a guy could live on sauce and mayo packets for days...
Growl!
It would have to do. He picked bits of God-knew-what out of the sauce and chewed it, his tongue burning with artificial spices. At least Indian food was intended to be eaten with bare paws.
He longed for some Chinese leftovers... some nice pork or ham or chicken, and its milder sauces. Who cared if it was all synthetic meat and tasted a little flat? He'd been unemployed so long, he barely remembered the taste of the real thing anyway.
If only that gang hadn't carved out their new turf near Chinatown...
The sauce-drenched plastic was soon empty of any real food, and he let it drop to the cement. Rummaging in the plastic recycling bins, he found an almost empty bottle of water.
Awesome.
He drank the cool plastic-flavored liquid greedily... drops falling from his muzzle.
There wasn't quite enough to wash away the spicy aftertaste.
"I'm better than this," he thought aloud.
Growl...
Not nearly enough food.
Not nearly enough water either.
And he'd be probably be sleeping later on the cement in an alley... on a "rug" of scavenged plastic if he was lucky.
Maybe getting proper food and a warm bed, despite whatever pain being a guinea pig might bring, was better than this...
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[Biometric Signature detected] [Scanning.....100%]
[Geoff Torla] [DOB 25/4/2857] [Age 26] [Rodent/M] [2% Cyberization]
The holoemitters automatically scanned the pattern of his body and logged him in.
He tapped open a white command menu in mid-air and pressed [Restore Session]
He holomenus he had saved reppeared in a neatly boxed translucent horizontal stack. He opened the holobox and rummaged through the stack until he found one of the sketchy posts he recognized as having been near the medical research post.
Tapping open a command menu, he pulled out the whole stack of postings it had been in, and spread them out in the air in front of him.
There it was!
A legit Canadian Federation email address.
He ran a search on "Andrea Technologies."
An established, organzied biotechnology company.
The things biotech researchers had done to people in past centuries...
The even worse things they had done to the first generations of anthros...
He shivered.
On the other paw... dumpster diving for food had even less dignity than being a well-fed guinea pig.
"Ok. Fine," he turned down at his aching stomach, "You win. Happy now?"
Growl...
His finger trembled as he poked open a reply to the post.