FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Pounding beats, bright flashing lights and the sour stench of a crush of bodies; the club was alive once more. Though, there were few times when the club was actually dead. Every night, regardless of the day of the week, a stampede of people would pour in, crowding the large, warehouse-sized room. Most danced to whatever mind-altering techno the DJ was playing from up on his steel platform above the mob. Others sat at tables off to one side, sipping drinks and popping pills, watching the lights as their minds slowly left them for the evenings. Others still, like Reed, sat at the bar, watching the comings and goings and scanning the crowd, looking for business.

Reed himself was someone people found hard to forget. He was dressed in a long, worn, brown leather coat, black slacks and a silk shirt to match. This was not any different from the members of the gyrating hoard on the dance floor in front of him. Unlike the mad dancers around him however, he was covered head to foot in shaggy grey fur with the feet, face and tail of a wolf. All that work courtesy of a deal gone wrong with a backroom Moscow clinic.

The deal had been simple: hook them up with a steady supply of nanites and he would get twenty percent of their first year's earnings. Easy creds for a quick job. What he had not been counting on was the supplier getting busted shipping the product. They folded and left Reed with his thumb up his ass and nothing left of the advance the Russians had paid him. One night he was off his ass in a bar on some kind of yellow, rectangular tab that he'd scored from the bartender when a couple of heavies in suits stomped in, slapped him across the face and dragged him out. The slap felt like nothing at the time and as they dragged him, the floor seemed to ripple behind him like a concrete puddle. He had no memory of being knocked out, but he remembered waking up in horrific pain, changed beyond recognition but suddenly very memorable. Instead of killing him, the Russians destroyed the carefully-cultivated anonymity of his features and replaced it with something no-one would ever forget. That's why he was at the club; he needed a proxy to meet with clients and do the legwork while he set up and monitored the business. He was sick of being small-time. He could not afford to be small-time anymore. Fucking Russians.

Reed scanned the crowd, his canine feet tapping the floor idly to the chest-pounding beat of the music, scanning the crowd for potentials. His prospects weren't good, from what he could see. There were goths in one corner, trying to look as much like vampires as they possibly could. In others were some tweaked-out ravers dancing, laughing and making out. He saw European assholes in bright, baggy shirts and pants; girls decked out in whatever plastic clothes were popular in Harajuku that week; some Cybers with their fluorescent, glowing hair. No prospects, only rejects, as Watt, his mentor, liked to say. He noticed some Teks in the crowd and that surprised him. Most members of the Cult of Technology stayed away from places that they accused of "abusing technology". The most likely prospects he saw were the ones he would have a hard time picking out in a crowd, much like he was before the shit in Moscow.

The bartender slid towards him and chuckled at him, his unearthly white teeth turned purple by the overhead black-light. His hair was slowly changing colours. "Another slow night, Reed?" the barman said, his hair having gone from pink to bright green. His voice struck Reed as being from Mid Haven.

"I wouldn't know. I don't know what a fast night's like." Reed answered, shrugging his shoulders.

"I seen a couple of people like you in here tonight." The bartender added, keeping up the conversation.

"Like me?"

"Yeah, you know, like some of them animal-people. Like you." He added helpfully.

"The difference between me and them is that they wanna look like that, man." Reed answered, shaking his head.

"Well, either way, there was a panther-lookin' dude and some chick modded-out to look like a mouse."

"A mouse? Why the hell would anyone want to look like a mouse?"

"Fucked if I know. The world is a weird place, Reed." The bartender replied. "Drink?"

"Yeah. A shot of vodka. . . What the hell is your name, anyway? I've been coming here almost every night for a month and I still don't know your name."

"Art." The bartender replied, his hair now a strange purple colour. "And are you sure about the vodka? What, with your bad history with Russia and all that." The bartender named Art wore a shit-eating grin while he poured the shot.

"Well then fuck you, Art." Reed said, taking the shot and pounding it down. "I got used to the stuff while I was in Moscow. Try to find something else in some of the shitty Implant bars they've got over there."

"Good drugs? In Russia, I mean." The bartender asked casually, pouring another drink. "On me, this time." He added

"Thanks. The drugs were the best. Shit that does more at once than I've ever seen. Sensory overload shit. Perfect for dingy bars like those Implant joints. I think swallowing them here would kill you though. There's too much noise and light." He swallowed the shot.

"Sounds like a good time."

"Despite my problems, Russia usually is, if that's what you're there for."

"So what. . . you know. . . are you looking for in all this mess?" Art asked, looking out into the crowd. "Like, you're always here and scanning the crowd but you've never told me what you're looking for. Maybe I can help or something."

"I'm looking for help." Reed answered, eyes still on the crowd. Reed needed someone with a decent head on their shoulders, someone with a mind for business and some hardware in their body. An Implant would be ideal. He needed someone who knew the intricacies of the Web and Cyberspace like the back of his hand and who could deal with people in person as well as they could blast their way through the thickest walls of virtual security.

"What kinda help? I'm looking for a change of career." Art said happily. His hair had turned red.

"I need someone who knows biz and how to transact it." He said.

"Well shit, man. I could do that. I was proxy for a couple of Japs who were in town a while back. A connection of mine pointed them to me. I can be discreet." He said. Reed was almost certain he was bullshitting. Another drink was suddenly in Reed's glass, then in a quick motion, it was gone.

"What Japs were these?" He asked.

"A couple of execs from some zaibatsu in Aomori. They were looking to make some cash, selling some prototypes to rival American companies. They needed a go-between for the transactions. They didn't want the Americans to know their names. Afraid their bosses might find out and make them cut their bellies open or whatever the fuck they do over there." The story was becoming slightly more believable. The bartender went to pour another and Reed placed his hand over the small glass.

"No more, man. I'm not trying to get shitfaced." He said, laughing a little. So, any other work?" He asked. "A couple of go-betweens for some zaibatsu drones doesn't seem like hard work."

"Yeah man. I played intermediary on a bunch of deals in the Toronto sector a couple of years ago, mostly moving bio-mods, nanites and implant gear to some Turkish and Korean dealers. Moved pills too." He said.

"Well I'll be, Art. You've got yourself some kind of résumé there." He said laughing. "Though I need more than that to work with. Can you hold your own if shit goes sour? Can you kill someone?" Art laughed and nodded slowly, his hair turning bright white.

"Without fucking blinking." He said coldly. "And I'm a bartender at this place. You don't think I have to bust a few skulls around here?"

"Man! It looks to me like you really want a different job!" Reed said laughing. Although Art was eager, he was still missing the most important thing. That's when he caught the slightest hint of discolouration on Art's arm. "Hey. . . Are you wearing a dermal patch?" he asked, looking at the strange patch of slightly paler skin on Art's arm.

"Shit. Yeah. I got some sun since I bought it. Can you really notice it?" Art asked, seeming a bit concerned.

"Nah, only if you stare. But what've you got under it? Fuck yourself up or something?" Art looked genuinely nervous.

"No. It's not that. I could lose my job if my boss saw it though." He said

"What, you got a swastika or something under there?" Reed said, laughing.

"No way! Well. . . c'mon over this way. The boss' security strip ends just at the end of the bar. He can't see past there." Art started casually making his way down the bar. Reed got to his feet, still thinking he'd never get used to the way the surgery messed up his feet. They felt springier somehow, like they were spring-loaded. He definitely could jump pretty high though. Now landing; that was the hard part. The actual toes on his feet were a lot shorter, like a dog's hind legs. It made buying pants a real pain in the ass. He started walking for where Art had moved to, feeling the drinks he'd been having all night wash over him a bit, making his head feel fuzzy. He scanned the crowd again while he moved, the same young girls, the same goths and ravers, the same cultists. Art seemed to be a bit of an oddity; someone who looked like an ordinary person, if you ignored the modified hair. He got to where Art was standing, looking less nervous than before

"Security blind spot." The bartender said with a smile. "I use it to move pills, mostly."

"So what's so horrible that you need to cover it with a patch so that your boss doesn't see it?" Reed asked, genuinely curious, despite the drinks in his system. Art looked around quickly, especially at the few Teks in the crowd and then peeled back the patch slowly. Reed was surprised to see what was underneath it: a small monitor shaped to the proportions of the bartender's fairly muscular forearm and a small, oval-shaped jack, about the size of an old USB port above it, nearer to the hand.

"Holy shit. That's some nice gear! Looks new."

"The display's custom to be discreet." Art answered. "But the hardware is a Fujitsu 22XDA interface implant. Got it upgraded about three weeks ago."

"Shit. That's some piece of hardware. Where'd you get that?"

"Hiroshima, if you'd believe it. I'd have thought I'd need to go to Tokyo for that kind of work, but it turns out there are some Implant docs in Hiroshima that do some good work on the cheap."

"The question now is, can you use it?" Reed was looking at the bartender with a challenge in his eye.

"I don't know? Why don't you try me and see?" Art replied, the cockiness of a professional C-Sapper starting to show through. The barman was showing potential.

"I'll get to that. The question is, if you're such hot shit, why are you tending bar at a club?" Reed asked, thinking this was all too good to be true.

"It's where the biz is at." He replied with a grin. "So many people like you come in here looking to hire a go-between, or a goon or a sapper and they all get to the bar at some point. It just so happens that you're looking for all three, and I'm the complete package." Art said, grinning slyly.

"Alright Art, I'll tell you what: Your implant is a Toshiba, right?" The barman nodded. "Well then I want you to sap the walls around the Toshiba employee network and get me some dirt on the CEO. Get me all the access codes to his personal files." Reed was confident in his challenge. Corporate networks were notoriously hard to sap. The walls around them were thick and complicated and trying to break in at the wrong point could get the cops on your ass in seconds and even kill someone if they were connected by a neuro-rig. It was even harder when you were breaking into an electronics company with their own rig. Their security would recognize it in a heartbeat. He knew that if Art could do that, then he was the guy he needed. "And I want it tomorrow night." He said in closing and stood up.

"Easy shit man. You'll have it." Art said confidently. "And that's 12 creds for the drinks." He added as Reed started to leave. The wolf-man turned back to the bartender whose hair was now deep blue and pressed a thin card against the bar. The bar suddenly came to life and an animated circle surrounded the card. '12Cr total. Thank you for your patronage!' appeared next to it and the receipt in the form of a thin printout zipped out from inside the table. Reed took the printout and picked up the card again, turning and leaving. "Tomorrow night!" He called and stalked towards the door, bumping into the panther Art had mentioned on his way out into a cold, wet Mid Haven night.

The air outside was cool, but at least it was quieter. No more pulsing lights, no more pounding beats and no more assholes in flashy shirts. His surgery had given him some pumped-up senses and the noise and stink of the club was more than he could take anymore. The night air smelled no cleaner, but it was familiar. It was home for Reed. His feet hit the pavement, his specially-made shoes crunching the mixture of rain-soaked concrete, cigarette butts and whatever other garbage got left lying around. He added the receipt to the mix.

"You shouldn't litter, mister," said a woman's voice from behind him. "It's bad for the environment."

"What environment? Besides, it's synthetic paper, sister." He answered back. "It'll dissolve when once it's wet enough." He said, not breaking stride.

"I saw you talking to Artie in there." The voice said. "You know, the bartender?"

"What of it?" He asked, turning around to look at who it was that was following him. It was the mouse-girl that he had heard Art describing. The fur on her body was a soft white and disappeared in places behind what looked like a black latex jacket and a black and white striped top. Below that she wore a matching black miniskirt, short enough that he could see that her underwear matched her shirt. She had big, mouse-like ears, to boot. A full mod, as far as Reed could tell, she even had a long pink tail which she currently had curled around a white leg. Her eyes were darting around quickly and she seemed unfocused. The bitch was on something, probably some kind of stim, something that Art might have slipped her over the counter in the security strip's blind spot.

"Talking business, huh?" she asked dreamily. "You know, I heard what you two were saying, too. You could get in some serious shit if anyone found out." She said, talking to Reed like she was toying with him.

"You going to tell anyone?" he asked coolly, turning around and starting to walk away. He heard the shuffling of her feet behind him, coming closer. Suddenly there was an arm around his waist and the cold steel of a knife against his throat. She was breathing in his sensitive canine ear, causing him to flinch just the slightest bit. He sighed softly, the nervousness that he should have felt just was not there, he had been in this kind of situation far too many times before.

"Maybe. But maybe not, if you give me your cred slip." She said, whispering softly and playfully. She was too fucked up for this, Reed knew. She wasn't holding him right. She'd be easy to overcome if things got ugly.

"I don't think so." Reed answered, keeping his tone even. "I think you should put the knife away." That's when he felt the adrenaline he'd been wanting so badly to kick in.

"Nah. I like it where it is. But I guess this means I'm going to have to cut you and take the slip anyway," she said cheerfully, pressing the blade harder against his neck. Before she could do any more, Reed spun around, elbowing the mouse-girl in the face. He reached for her knife arm and locked it, twisting her wrist until she cried out in pain and dropped the shining length of metal on the pavement. He grabbed her arm again and tossed her over his shoulder to the ground where she landed with a heavy thump, splashing some of the pooled rain water up when she landed. She lay there dazed, not seeming to know what exactly had happened to her. The moon came out through the clouds for the briefest moment and he caught a glimpse of her bloodied face, thinking that she was actually kind-of cute, despite the fact that she looked like she should be in some giant cage, running on a giant wheel. Reed picked up the knife and held it firmly in one hand, crouching over the mouse-girl.

"Well now. That was fuckin' sloppy." Reed said, pressing the point of the blade against her throat. "You should know better than to try to rob someone when you're as jacked up as you are." He said shaking his head.

"Fuck you, puppy." She shot back, still dazed. She was trembling. Reed shook his head again and stood up, offering her a hand.

"Come on." He said firmly. "You need to get home and sleep this shit off." He'd been in her position before; jacked up on some kind of righteous stim, feeling invincible and deciding that he'd rather rob some poor guy in the street than try and do some honest business. It always ended up with him getting rolled and left beaten in a gutter somewhere. She took the hand and stood up but shook her head at him, backing up slowly.

"I ain't got a place." She said. "I was tryin' to roll you so I could get a hotel for a few days." She said, tears in her wild eyes. He smiled, feeling generous he pulled a smoke out of a pack in his pocket and offered her one. She took it. He lit it with a thin lighter made to look like a match. "Thanks." She said, taking a deep haul. "It's been a week since I had a smoke."

"Then I feel like shit for getting you on them again." He said. "Though with that surgery, I'm guessing the nanites take care of things like the addiction."

"Nanites? What am I, made of money?" she said, laughing. "I saved for five years to get this work done. I head off to Korea to get the work done in some backroom bio-mod lab. I spend almost a month recovering from it and then another two learning how to do everything over again.

"They didn't even give you a 'soft to teach you that shit? Damn, you really did buy the economy model." He said, showing his teeth in a mean-spirited grin.

"Not like I was big into biz or anything. I waited tables to get this shit. You probably didn't have to think twice about the money when you got that work done." She said, pointing to his body. "It's a really good mod." Reed growled low and shook his head.

"I didn't want this shit." He said. "Deal went bad and I ended up getting this done-up by the mob." He said.

"Italians?" She asked, taking a drag and blowing out the smoke, which looked blue in the moonlight.

"Russians." He corrected her. "Instead of killing me over the money they lost, they turned me into this." He said, motioning over his body.

"Why?" she asked, and that was the magic question. He had his theories about it, sure, but he never knew why.

"Fucked if I know. I figured they wanted to be cruel. The crucial thing to being in the kind of business I'm in is the ability to blend into a crowd, to not look like anyone in particular. Now I'm some kind of wolf-looking freak show." He said. "I think though, that they were probably testing the procedure. The clinics in Russia are just getting into the full-body modding game. I guess they needed a test subject who didn't mean anything to them. That was me." He shrugged. "They gave me the full package though. Nanites, neuro-softs, all of it."

"Fucked up." She said.

"Yeah. So hey, you need a place to crash? I've got a couch." He asked, not knowing why he was offering sanctuary to someone who came pretty close to cutting his throat. Maybe he saw himself in her. Like when he was just getting started in the game. Eighteen and reckless. It seemed like a lifetime had gone by since then, but it was only eight years.

"I think I'll stay here all the same, thanks." She said. "I'm not done partying yet." She said. "Thanks for the smoke and, you know, for not killing me." She said, laughing a bit in spite of herself.

"Alright. Though I'd get your face cleaned up. I split your eyebrow when I elbowed you." He said. "See you around." He said and just turned and walked away. Crazy bitch. He thought to himself as he headed out into the street.

After walking for what felt like ages, he found himself walking along an orange-lit neighbourhood along one of the avenues that had both a major and minor extension, the minor being where he stood and the major built several storeys above him and the source of the lights illuminating his way. He heard movement in an alley, the scurrying of a rat or maybe the sound of a thief making good his escape. It could even have been someone in their death throes. This kind of place never made him nervous anymore. Like with the girl at the club, he'd been in too many situations like that before for it to even begin to plant the seeds of fear in his mind.

After a short period of time, he ended up face-to-face with the door to his apartment tower. The building was fairly new and he was thankful for that. New buildings had good security, spacious apartments and all the modern amenities that many of the old blocks in Mid Haven lacked. He tiredly pulled a foil tab from his pocket and slid it across a small black panel next to the door. A soft, mechanical woman's voice began to speak. "Confirmed." It said. "Welcome home, Vincent Reed. Please wait. The elevator will be there shortly." He waited in front of the building, his eyes constantly scanning the dark alleys and dimly lit fringes of the street for movement. A three-legged dog slinked out of one of one dark corner and started to hobble down the avenue, towards the intersection. He heard a chime behind him and turned to see that the elevator doors had quietly hissed open, leaving only the sight of the slightly dirty, dimly lit interior of the elevator.

He saw the inside of this box every day and it never changed. The same four doors marked as 'A', 'B', 'C' and 'exit'; the same wet dirt on the floor; same stale smell of what smelled like piss that someone tried to clean with some kind of home-brewed cleanser and the same ads on the walls running down the side of the doors like banners: a picture of a slim Japanese girl in a bathing suit eating sushi, a moving hologram of some guy driving a new car manually which seemed ridiculous to Reed, a Chinese take-out menu and a mirror. Same shit, different day. He scanned his key over the pad and then said "Reed, 30C." The door behind him hissed shut and he pulled his tail in quickly just before it got caught in the door. He felt a sudden pressure as the elevator started upwards. He swallowed to pop his ears and shut his eyes, suddenly feeling very tired.

He must have dozed off because he started, his eyes darting open suddenly to find that the elevator had stopped and a soft voice was reminding him that he had arrived. He stepped out the door labelled 'C' and into his apartment. The door shut behind him and he finally relaxed. Comfortable as he was with the pressures and dangers of his life and profession, he knew that there was never any reason to relax his guard. Anyone could be after him and anyone could be the next guy to try and kill him. He pulled off his coat and pressed a button on the wall, causing a panel to slide open to reveal a mechanical closet about a foot wide. He hung his coat and hit the button again, watching the jacket retract into the wall and the panel shutting, keeping it well away.

Bars of orange light streamed in and streaked the apartment through his blinds, showing the barest hint of the contents: the angular shade of a lamp, the thin, plastic shine of a TV set and the tired, worn cushions of an old sofa. He turned to his right and hit a switch, causing several stylized fluorescent wall sconces to flicker twice and light up, flooding his house with a soft, white glow. The apartment wasn't big by any means, but it served its purpose. A media set complete with TV, audio gear and a VStim rig across from a sofa to use it all on. There was a small kitchen to one side in a separate little alcove and his bedroom to the left. The bedroom is where he slept and where he kept his console. He decided TV wasn't worth it and turned off the light again, moving for his bedroom where he sat at his desk, attached the console's interrupter patches to his temples and switched on the machine, which was no bigger than a couple of old movie cases, one on top of the other.

His vision blinked out suddenly and went black and the words 'Connecting. Please wait.' appeared across his field of vision. In a few seconds the expanses of cyberspace appeared in front of him and he drifted into it, wandering through corridors of information and the bright lights and attractions of all the Web had to offer. Wolf-man or not, in the Web he was anyone and everyone; anyone he wanted to be. He could try cracking some small-time company's walls for practise but, if all went well, he'd have someone else with much newer hardware to do that for him soon enough.

Art seemed to be the real deal but he supposed that he'd not be able to tell until the next night. Then there was that mouse-girl whose named he never learned. He found himself wondering if she found some place to crash that night or if she was still at the club. He thought back to the quick non-fight with her while his avatar drifted through cyberspace, exploring the world. He'd won the fight easily but thought that sober, the girl might actually be dangerous. He wondered if she'd managed to roll someone else and then, remembering her knife that he'd later stowed in his pocket, he thought that it likely wasn't the case. Likely she paid her way by keeping some tweaked-out clubber's bed warm. None of my business anyway. Reed thought. Then why am I still thinking about it? He laughed in the loneliness of his small bedroom and shook his head. Reed, you're going soft.

He decided to camp out outside the Toshiba network and look for activity. An hour passed and nothing was happening and he was almost ready to give up when he saw the slightest blip in the wall of the Toshiba's security which worked its way in quickly, seeming to slide in between the cracks. Seems like our bartender's in. . . He thought a genuine smile on his face. He didn't stick around to see how it turned out. He'd find out the next night. He brought up the command menu and logged himself out. Suddenly he was back in his room and out of the bright, neon glow of the Web and he regretted it a little. He envied people like Art who carried their consoles around in their bodies, able to jump in wherever they were. His clock read 3:20am and he knew the bartender was likely home by now, seated much as he was at a desk, cracking and blowing the walls of the Toshiba's construct, ferreting through layers and layers of security to get what Reed had asked him for.

Satisfied in his knowledge, Reed undressed, still having trouble with his tail and awkward feet when it came to his pants and tossed the mess onto the floor, deciding to deal with it later. Satisfied, he shut the lights and flopped down on his back on his deep blue sheets. Tomorrow would be a big day he knew and decided to get some sleep to be ready for the coming light. He sunk into his sheets on the big memory foam mattress and closed his eyes, falling into what was possibly the first good night sleep he'd had in months.