FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

My mother had just moved out to some middle part of Missouri. Previously, I had accomplished a third of my progress at a college in St. Charles County when, having been distracted by attending various extracurricular activities both on and off campus, I managed to score my first failing grade, delaying my graduation for another semester or so. Discouraged, I opted to take summer classes online, since I thought that I could at least focus better in a non-class environment while being able to pursue various computer-centric hobbies. Incidentally, this happened at the same time that my mother had gotten remarried, and I relocated with her and her new hubbie to his house in the Ozark Highlands. Travelling the long road there, however, I happened upon this abnormally large building in the distance....

I took the time to test out the bike. I hadn't ridden it for over a decade due to loss of interest, even though I could still fit in the seat and pedals in my early 20's. Now, with my mother's new husband at work in town all the time during the summer, I could take out some non-schoolwork-related time for riding down the steep, sparsely-wooded roads. I began pedaling to the library every so often, looking at the books in the Information Technology section, and coming back home to work more on my AR glasses. They had already been out on the market for a decade and a half (I had bought the stereoscopic version a while back), but I wanted to use what I had learned from user group meetings back in St. Charles to try fitting a miniature two-way BCI device onto both temple arms of the glasses, allowing me to mentally control the graphic display in the lenses. Apart from dream-related purposes, I didn't see any other long-term need for futzing around with BCI.

One afternoon, as I pedaled back from the library, I looked at the large building a few miles away from the main road in the town. I wondered for what purpose the building was designed, as it didn't seem like a granary or a barn, but more like some sort of hangar for planes. I rode the bike up the rocky road to the building

Peeking inside, the "lobby" of the building looked even more deep, dark and decrepit than the immediate outside. There didn't even seem to be any signs of recent human visitation to the building in any noticeable timespan. Still, I couldn't resist the urge to shout "Hello?!" into the inner darkness. It was unfortunate that I didn't bring a flashlight with me, so I tried leaving the door open so that some light could shine inside. I walked in, wearing the glasses with the incomplete BCI mod, hoping that nothing would fall on me while inside the dingy, dusty megagarage.

"What was that?" I was suddenly aware of tiny noises from within the building. I prepared to duck-n'-cover at any minute as my fear heightened with every step. I then slowed as my ears picked up two outstanding sounds: the fast-approaching sound of a hopping metal spring and a low, sub-bass hum that emanated throughout the building. Turning around, I gasped for breath as I saw the most menacingly-shaped creature approach me. It jumped on my shoulders, speaking in a fast-paced, medium-pitch garble that I couldn't even begin to understand; it poked at my glasses, ticking one of the lenses before I tried shooing it away in my haste to leave.

"WHO'S THERE?!" A low, booming, dreadful tone slowly dispersed the question to the walls around me, causing them to slightly, frightfully rumble. Then, the floor began to shift from underneath me, leading me to collapse in an amazed stupor as the ground in the hangar opened up into a deep, dark pit. A giant robotic hand then grasped the side of the remaining floor space, pulling its attached body upward onto the surface with a great, scraping struggle of metal against metal. I looked into the vaunted face of the character who seemed to own this part of the countryside by its sheer size. The face was robotic and fearsome to my beholding eye, and I rediscovered my ability to easily sicken myself with staring directly upwards for a long while.

"Who are you, human?!" The gargantuan being asked me again. I squeaked, "Beau..."

"Who?! Speak up!," he said, leaning his 10-foot-tall head to my face. "My name is Beau Fortell. I'msosorrythatIcamehereI'mleavingnow...."

"Stop...why did you come here?" "I...I just wanted to see what was up here in this building. I thought it was abandoned until you started shouting and stuff." Standing upward, he said, "Stay for a while, and I will tell you who I am." "Why should I find out who you are? I can assume that you're a pretty advanced A.I." "It's because I notice your glasses."

Yes, my glasses. It - a Decepticon from outer space named Nightbeast - was interested in my glasses, of all things. He had come to this planet some 50 years ago after being banished by his superior for some minor slip-up, so he only last saw human technology from the 1940s and 1950s, and didn't know that humans could now "assimilate" with computerized technology as I had done with my glasses. To him, I practically looked like some cyborg-ish entity. It turned out that his civilization had long ago perfected nanotechnology, but he, being old in Cybertronian years and distant from recent events on his home planet, wasn't as familiar with how to shift his body size to more manageable, life-like sizes. I told him that I could help with that if I could get some books from the library, but...

"I cannot let you leave." "Why? It's after dark and my mother's going to worry sick about me." "I cannot trust you to keep my presence secret." "So...how am I gonna get my info on helping you form a humanoid body?"

Suddenly, a red laser bar glances over my glasses.

"My readings indicate that your glasses can pick up emitted signals." "Yeah, but I'm nowhere near a wi-fi area. It won't work out here." "Let me try..."

The wi-fi indicator on my lenses then began to turn green. I was surprised that he knew exactly how to emit his own hotspot. "OK, Nightbeast, let's find this information for you."

Walking him through searching Google and other search engines, he overshot his searches a few times before he managed to get the hang of it. Soon enough, he was flying through the Web at the most superhumanly rapid pace, gleaning and incorporating information into his database (if that's what you call a robot brain). Then he tried to put two-and-two together and push his shapeshifting capabilities to what seemed to be the most pressing limits imaginable. Folding some parts of himself inward and letting other parts be dissolved and integrated by nanorobots the size of sand, he slowly, but surely, managed to reduce the size of his body down to my own height: 5'11''.

"Suddenly, everything in this building looks bigger than I imagined it to be for humans," Nightbeast said. "Yeah," I replied, "that's why humans like myself can get so flustered by heights. Ever met anyone bigger than yourself?"

"Only a few...on Cybertron."

His exterior still looked pretty robotic, but he managed to gain - at least - a likeness to Millennium Man.

"So how long has it been since I got here?," I asked.

"Three days." "Huh?!"

Then I looked at myself, and realized that I didn't even feel dirty or smelly....or tired. I took off my shirt - no need for reservations when you're in front of a robot - and smelled it to realize that it didn't even smell of the deodorant that I had stuck on my body days prior. It had NO smell whatsoever.

"How..." "Apparently, the nanobots have kept you fresh during your stay. But I think it's time for you to leave." "But I have a few more questions...like how---" "No need for that. I'll try to find my way into the open without being caught. Thank you."

And with that, he emitted a hum of ultrasound that lifted me off of my feet, sending me hurtling to the nearest open exit. Dusting myself off after such a sudden shove, I muttered, "what a...uh...humanophobe!"

Getting my bike, I rode some of the long road back home. Then I hear a screeching sound of tires behind me, and then a sudden weight was thrown on me, nearly crushing me as everything turned black.

......

I stirred awake, then looked around. I was laying in a field at the edge some wooded area. I wondered about how I got there, and for how long I had been laying there. Everything about this forest looked odd, yet familiar in some unfathomable way. I walked into the woods, looking at the bluish, clouded afternoon skies above me, wondering all the while about my reason for why I was here.

Then I heard a low growl which emanated from somewhere deep within the thick and twisted forestry. The sound of an approaching entity began to edge closer and closer, leading me to glance rapidly around me in increasingly heightened fear and self-doubt. Suddenly, a red flash emanated into my peripheral vision, and I realized....this is a dream I've had before. I'm already familiar with what happens: I get chased, my hand gets bitten by a wolf, then I wake up.

"Beau!"

Huh? Wasn't that Nightbeast's voice in the distance?

"Don't worry, I'm here!" "How'd you get into my head?" "Your glasses. They let you receive digital signals as thought, so I'm talking to you telepathically." "Wait, you aren't the wolf in this dream, are you?" "What wolf?"

I see the wolf's eyes in the bush, and I begin to step backward. The wolf then steps into my direction, growling at my face.

"Megatron!" "Megatron?" I wondered. "How did you know I was here? Shouldn't you be wasting away on this planet like I told you?"

My mouth gaped as I saw the wolf's head transform into the head of a robotic being, one which bore the sheer face of evil - at least, I think that was what the dream told me.

Megatron then snarled, "This puny human....you've fraternized with him and sought his help? You imbecile! We Decepticons crush and enslave these maggots!"

Nightbeast then glided from the skies of my dream, wielding a multi-dagger weapon with a vengeance as he hurtled his humanoid form directly onto the wolf-bot. Megatron then threw Nightbeast off of his form as he morphed himself into his full robotic form, and Nightbeast performed a similar transformation as the two clashed in a terrible deathmatch of clashing, clanging, sparkling metal. Fighting for a short while, Megatron then kicked Nightbeast in the face, then stomped his foot onto him as he was about to cut through him with his own sword. Nightbeast then raised his arm as he sent a crackling, searing laser beam straight through Megatron's hide. Megatron then stumbled and fell as his form evaporated. "Your body is scarred from an accident, Beau," Nightbeast said. "So where am I?," I asked. "It is back in the hangar. I'm sorry that I blew you out the door," Nightbeast said, with a bit of remorse. "Shouldn't I be in the hospital?" "Perhaps. But the fact that Megatron knows who you are, and how you are associated with me, means that your life is in danger if he ever finds out where you live." I thought about that. Apparently, Nightbeast had been rejected by Megatron's war machine a long while back, but Megatron still had some lingering grudges against Nightbeast for some reason. "So what can I do now? I can't see my family, I can't see anyone in the outside world except for you, and I don't know how I'm going to get back to normalcy." "Your time of normalcy ended when you first met me." "As did yours. But actually, I admire the way that you handled Megatron earlier with such...I don't know....bravery?" "What are you getting at." "See, I've been thinking....I'm a bit 'broken beyond repair', if you catch my drift, and I don't want to be caught off guard by Megatron again, at least not like this." "But I'm willing to help you for as long as Megatron lives and schemes." "But I envy you, Nightbeast. I think that you handled him awesomely with your armor and shapeshifting capabilities." "Do you want to be like me? More than what you already are?" "As close as I can imagine, yeah."

So we resolved that I would get my body replaced with that of a shapeshifting Transformer like himself. Nightbeast pored over ever possible documentation that he could find online to replace every bit of me with metal joints, ligaments, limbs, and all. I can't tell you exactly how long it took, but I remember the day that he told me that my body was finally ready. He grasped my arm in my dream, and we flew upward into the skies above....

"OK, you can open your eyes now."

My eyes opened, and I could feel every twist and whirr of my eyes adjusting to the premiere entrance of light. It was like I was looking through some sort of binocular webcam. I looked at my arms, my hands....they could rotate a full 360 degrees, they could shift backward to reveal arm cannons, they could even detach just so that I could beat a few metallic heads in with a robotic two-by-four.

"This feels weird, Nightbeast."

"I could imagine so..." I grasped his hand, hoping that the disorientation of this sudden change of body structure would not linger for that long. I then hugged him. "Beau, don't worry. I'll be with you every step of the way."

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