Permissions
In which young love encounters a slight technical hitch.
There's a reason why I'm hiding in a trash bin from the most attractive female I ever met, having covered myself carefully with black polythene rubbish bags and the faint rank stench of leftover restaurant food, so not even my scent can be seen if she should happen to lift the battered cover. My heart is racing dangerously fast and all the little kittens will love the smell of me later, but I literally don't have a choice. I'm not even sure whether I could explain this to myself.
The first time I heard about it was before they even gave it the name, on some equally trashy news-slash-science program where they were using it as filler. It was a project in machine interpretation of neural activity, not actually very spectacular. Show the wolf guy wearing the clumsy headset with all the induction electrodes a cute kitten, and the display would reconstruct an interpolation of said kitten with just enough detail that the picture was recognizable. Kitty as recorded deep in the woods by an amateur cameraman out looking for a less-than-urban legend.
There was a brief bit near the end in which they noted an incidental ability to quantify neural states. Having seen kitty, it was possible to confirm that something else was also cute, like the feline who'd been on the cover of Playfur last month. Cue laughs all around with the research team.
Yeah, actually not so great. Because it turned out that sort of quantification worked far better than the imaging capacity, and even better than that when applied to a certain field of general interest to almost every grown fur in existence over the age of consent. The technology disappeared for a few years while a large corporation (not to be named here, they'd sue) worked out the kinks, so to speak, and when it suddenly worked it's way back into the public awareness over the course of a couple of months, it had a new name. Permissions.
The first public outing of the device, the thing that got it noticed as more than a fad, was when it was demanded as part of the defense in a sensational, trial-of-the-century rape case. The century hadn't been going for too long, so this was only the third or fourth such public nightmare, but there was plenty there to work with. A female snow leopard, virginal and pretty, had participated in a sort of extreme party game that ended with her being raped, screaming and sobbing, in front of an entire crowd by her partner in the exercise, then shared around with several of his friends until appetites were satisfied. If it had been an average-looking foxy-girl with glasses and a slight case of mange, no-one would've cared, but those glorious blue eyes and that flowing white-to-grey fur brought out the public outrage as only beauty could.
The defense was screwed worse than she'd been, because their only possible save was testimony by the assailant, the huge, good-looking, overly privileged son of a senator and football hero. Naturally everyone hated him. His defense was that the snow leopard and her really hot lesbian girlfriend (he actually said that) had come to him in advance and that she'd insisted, urged on by the girlfriend, that she really wanted to play the game and that he shouldn't stop, no matter what she said or did, until he'd finished with her. Every detail revealed just made it worse. A virgin. A lesbian. The cute little stained panties, exhibit G (the papers called them the G-string of damnation) which read 'Girls Only!' under her virgin blood on them. The fact that several party-goers had recorded the events on their phones and she could clearly be seen struggling to escape right up to the very moment he slammed her down and went all the way in and she screamed.
With nowhere left to go, the defense tried for a desperate saving roll. Experts testified and finally allowance was granted by the judge to try the device, apparently because she didn't believe anything could save them at this point. The prosecution objected, and the snow leopardess was finally forced to testify, wearing the latest version like a small compact tiara. Paparazzi took sensationalized snaps in a swarm of flashes as she took the stand.
The result was madness. Because what the device could do was read neural state. So it knew what you really wanted, even if you didn't know you wanted it. Hence the name. The results were one-hundred-percent verifiable and undeniably valid.
At that point, of course, it caved into sordidness. 'She wanted it' had just become a sound legal defense, even if she didn't know she wanted it, or changed her mind a few minutes later. The lion senators son was exonerated, and complete tools everywhere cheered. Half the country damned the snow leopardess for lying to herself, and the other half thought she was even hotter that way. The last time she made the news, she'd been forced into low-budget internet porn to make a living.
Suddenly a Permissions kit was the hot new thing to have at parties.
None of this, of course, mattered to me very much at the time. I didn't go to parties, I sympathized with the poor damn snow leopardess. Famous people doing very stupid things was nothing new and so I barely even followed the trial, except to be predictably appalled at the outcome. A new and dangerous thing had been set loose into society, and no-one had really noticed the difference.
What I was, was a fan of the internet. I'd never had that much in the way of social skills in good-old real life. I had very little money, dull and battered-looking scales, and tended to be employed only in short blocks of about ninety days before they fired me, not because I'd done anything wrong but because as soon as demand was back down, I was the most expendable. A couple of times I'd even accidentally improved the work-flow and put myself out of a job, which scarcely encouraged me to make more of an effort.
The internet, though, was a wonderful place. Because no-one could see my face or know my real name, I could just say stuff without being judged first on my lack of looks and friends. And I didn't even want to say anything terribly exciting or nasty, when compared to most people. I could just be myself without any prejudice against my looks and appearance. I could even say charming things to the females (some of whom actually even were females, as best I could tell) and they'd be amused or happy, send charming comments of their own right back. Totally harmless fun, which in real life would have creeped them out because they'd have seen my scaly face and jumped straight to the wrong conclusion.
Problems first arose when I got into a small conflict with one of the other users on my favorite site. This guy had written something that was quite astonishingly horrifying, not because it was badly written, but because such skill had gone into creating something so atrociously cruel. Even the fans of that sort of material had left comments about how it was excessively brutal and unnecessary. I'd just stumbled onto it mostly innocently from the accompanying illustration the week before and it literally disturbed me. I couldn't keep the damned thing out of my head. I felt almost sick when I woke up in the morning and remembered what I'd read before I closed the page.
I'd always assumed up until then that the whole 'things you can't read without losing your mind' category was just an invention of literature, that it didn't exist. Turns out it does exist, it just requires a deeply defective mind with a complete lack of compassion and superb writing skills. Note that I don't say lack of empathy, because you need that to deeply understand and enhance the suffering of others. It may have been fiction, but what it said about its author terrified me.
So I added a comment of my own. It was tidy, concise, polite and neatly explained why I felt that this sort of thing was both wrong and indicative of a need to obtain psychological help, even as just a work a literature. I immediately realized I'd made an awful mistake.
I kind of hoped to be ignored, or perhaps just retaliated at with the most well-written invective ever seen in a comment box, but even more scary was the measured reply I received, which attempted to justify his work as though I was one of its fans. Afraid to take it any further, I requested as politely as I could that he not contact me ever again, and in return I would do the same. When this offer was accepted, I immediately deleted every single comment involved with great relief.
From then on, I politely avoided this other user. Since my heart rate spiked uncomfortably at even seeing his user name, that wasn't too hard. I felt my only hope of safety was to make sure I avoided him completely, and that I'd been terribly lucky not to provoke him.
After quite some time passed and there was no sign of any obvious retaliation, I started to relax again. After all, there's always a defective bit in there somewhere if the shipment is big enough, and why should my private life be any different to any of the jobs I'd held in the past? I always ended up being the one to fill in the return form because everyone else had more important things to do, and this was no different, just scarier. A broken widget, after all, is less likely to hunt you down.
Anyway, it was about a year later and my latest job had just dissolved (they had been nice enough to keep me on a couple of days longer than they strictly needed to, so I could enjoy Employee Pizza Day, but I was definitely gone and they only let me know that after I'd polished off the last slice nobody else wanted). Since I'd gotten into the habit of going in early, and it takes me a while to get used to being unemployed again, I had nothing left to do after a couple of hours of finishing off all the stray chores around the house I'd been meaning to get around to.
On a whim, I decided to visit the nearest zoo. I had a ticket that a friend of mine had bought in advance to go to the zoo with his daughter, but it hadn't panned out and they'd had to reschedule, ending up paying at the door. The spare tickets had then gone to me and some guy at his work who randomly happened to have the following day off. I now subsequently owed him a take-away meal of equal value at some point in exchange.
It was a rainy sort of day, so attendance was low and the concrete paths were damp, but I found that I was enjoying myself anyway. With fewer people around the feral animals were unafraid to come out of their dens and explore the enclosures, wandering around doing strangely complicated things born out of instincts or inherited from their parents. It was pleasantly quietly save for occasional animal calls and the occasional light shower.
I made a point of visiting the reptile house, which was less a home and more of an outdoor swamp, with steep walls to prevent an escape. As ever, I was fascinated by the amazing stillness of the alligators and crocodiles, the heavy ridged black armor of scales protecting them as they rested, completely unmoving, in the shallows with just their eyes looking out. Not even breathing or any sign of a heartbeat was visible. They were just perfectly still, like statues of alligators.
And then suddenly things were looking up, just like when they throw the alligators their meat and there's an astonishing burst of movement, because the most amazing female I'd ever seen was there, taking photographs of the animals with a very sophisticated looking camera that had a complex lens attachment and a high definition screen on the back to show what she was looking at. She was a stunningly gorgeous wolfess, with amazing deep grey fur in a pattern of several shades just like that poor snow leopardess, but with dark eyes in a tone of brown that was almost black.
I practically felt my heart leap into my throat. I'm not one for passionate gestures and I'm normally the cool-blooded sort, but there was just something about her. The way her nose wrinkled, maybe, or the way she flicked her ears as she concentrated to take the shot. She was wearing an oddly old-fashioned dress, sort of like a conscientious attempt to emulate the style of a couple of centuries ago but deliberately made modern. It had buttons and ties down the front, a band of sorts to accentuate an average yet somehow stunning cleavage. If anything she looked a little under-dressed for the weather, like she should be wearing some sort of long jacket or something over it and this was just what went underneath. She was barefoot, a bold decision for a zoo, even with paw-pads.
Damn, even her dew-claws were hot. She caught sight of me over the viewfinder and smiled.
We had an incredible day. I'm sure I don't need to go into the details. She said something, I said something, we got into a conversation. Somehow it just clicked, which was ironic considering that she was a photographer and constantly taking snapshots, and that normally I'm completely terrible at talking to the females. Before we knew it we'd been talking for hours and visited half the zoo.
My favorite memory of that day is of the lion exhibit. I'd been hoping to see the feral lionesses, because I greatly admire their grace and strength, but it seemed they'd conceded to the weather and remained in their heated den. Only their male was out and about, driven by territorial imperatives to climb a small bluff inside their enclosure and make his call. He braced himself, claws into the dirt, drew in a slow deep breath, and then the membranes at the corners of his lips drew taunt, as he gave out a throaty "hufff!" that echoed across entire zoo, finely aerosolized saliva spraying in hot steamy clouds from his mouth each time as he roared from deep in his chest.
"Damn that's sexy," said the wolfess, who I'd already come to think of as my wolfess, as she rapidly clicked a whole series of shots."I wish I had him under me."
It was kind of an odd thing to say, but I could sort of understand it. The feral lion was very big and strong and deeply passionate, and I could see how she might be attracted to that sort of thing in an instinctive sort of way. I could never be that intense, of course. Or could I?
Once the lion had finished its territorial cries, caught its breath with it chest heaving, and then made its way back to the den to be with its females, I asked the wolfess if I could kiss her. She seemed to still be a little caught up in whatever fantasy she was having, and so I was surprised when she said yes. It was an astonishing experience, because her heart was beating just as fast as mine and she curled up around me as I curled around her. There were a couple of other people there with cameras, attracted by the lions roaring, and someone actually wolf-whistled when we kissed.
After we finally managed to pry ourselves off each other, she had this strange light in her eyes and couldn't stop taking quick glances at me. I was a little lost, I'd never been involved in anything like this before. Perhaps, I thought, I'd finally manged to shed my scales and get the hang of making real contact with another fur.
We ended up exploring pretty much the entire damn zoo. It was a poorly attended weekday and so they started closing up even earlier than usual, and several passing staff warned us that we'd have to hurry to reach the main gates before they closed. Even the animals seemed to have lost interest and headed back to their dens, with no more of their sentient cousins to observe. A feral tiger sat in the entrance to its rocky' cliff-like lair, and watched us pass with the aspect of a bored businessman as it patiently licked out its fur at the end of the day.
On the way out, we exchanged names and phone numbers in the parking lot, as you do. I felt a lot better about life and resolved to start looking for another job tomorrow. I had enough money that it wasn't immediately urgent. At home again, I fell asleep dreaming of the wolfess and her beautiful dark eyes.
It was really my own fault, what happened next. Searching for jobs online isn't very exciting, so after applying for several of the best immediate prospects, I decided to reward myself with a little lunch break and checking out developments on my favorite site. There were the usual new posts, artworks, short stories, and so forth, and reading them all gave me the usual feeling of being a little warmer inside, close to a community of friends even if none of them knew my real name or face.
When I saw a familiar user name, I felt the by now expected surge of nerves and discomfort. I'd gotten used to it, though, and I was about to flip through to the next page when it struck me that there was something equally familiar about the photographs.
I was casually aware that my pet nemesis had other hobbies outside writing horrific cruelty. He also liked dinosaur exhibits, cute feral animals, long walks on the beach and sexually torturing innocent females to within an inch of their life and sanity (he was against actually killing them, as that would end the possibility of further mental pain and suffering). I hadn't thought much of it, because even insane people have lives and there was no evidence I knew of that he'd ever attempted to actually put any of his ideas into practice.
But as I looked through the photographs, bolstering myself with the repeated reminder that they were just pictures of cute animals and not at all evil in and of themselves, I realized they matched my day out with the amazing wolfess in all particulars. They hadn't been posted in any particular order, not all of the feral animals were there or necessarily doing the same things, but it was definitely the same zoo and the same day. There were the alligators, like sculptures. There were the other exhibits we'd seen. Son of a bitch, there was the lion roaring! That sick bastard had been there, right next to us as we kissed! He might have even been the one doing the wolf-whistling!
It made me want to throw up.
My first thought was to call and warn her, but it was so crazy and far-fetched. It wasn't impossible that it might have been a coincidence, he liked to take photographs of animals and there was no way he could possibly know who I was. I'd made sure back when I signed up that there was no personal information about me anywhere on the site, I never even revealed which country I was in. He might have been able to deduce that somehow by the unavoidable details of my log-on times, but then to get an address he'd have had to backtrack me somehow through a secure service provider that didn't even use fixed addresses. Unless this guy was a professional hacker, I didn't see how he could ever have found me, let alone know I was going to the zoo before I even decided myself.
I calmed myself, took deep breaths. It was a coincidence, that's all it was. If I told the wolfess she'd think it was some sort of desperate and implausible tactic to get her into bed and the nearest thing I'd ever had to an actual relationship would be wrecked before it even started. If anything, it would be a good idea to keep it casual with her to minimize the risk. I'd just make like I hadn't seen the pictures at all, which was entirely possible even if he'd posted them deliberately. I could do this.
I waited a while to call her, because that was how I understood the etiquette of the situation was supposed to work. Guy is expected to call first, wait a while and don't be too eager or else it might put her off. I decided that I'd try to get her to suggest where she wanted to go, so as to put her at her ease, let her go somewhere she felt comfortable and safe. It went okay and we had a long and quite enjoyable conversation, and by the time I finally got around to suggesting a date it all worked out quite naturally. She had some friends who threw a party once a month, always quite a good party with a decent sort of crowd, drinks but not too many, and interesting snacks. Each time they added one new thing, to keep it interesting. Would I like to come to the party?
Of course I said yes. I wasn't even thinking about the other situation after we'd been talking for five minutes or so, I was just so happy to hear the sound of her voice. Even the way she talked was amazing, I just couldn't get enough of her. I was stupidly in love.
So, I showed up to the party. It was being held at someones house down a back-road, but it seemed pretty good. Parking was a breeze and the place was well lit and fairly clean, quite the opposite of the stereotypical party dive. I introduced myself to the hosts at the door and was welcomed inside, in short order finding myself with a good cheap beer and some barbeque snacks. My wolfess was already there, this time wearing a different unique dress that looked sort of like a trench-coat or even great-coat, only ever-so-much lighter, with elaborate rolled up and embroidered sleeves, and a lacy ruff between her breasts. It made her look even hotter than she had before.
Where the hell does she find these things, I asked myself, shaking my head in amazement, and told her how good she looked. She drew me down and kissed me again and it was just as good as the first time, and I felt much safer. I was the only new person at the party, which meant any other strangers would stick out like a broken claw.
And this, of course, is the point where the Permissions system comes back into the story. Because that was the new thing that had been added to the party that month. It was just a rental, a modern version of that classic gadget the love tester, but considerably scarier if you thought about it too hard. They, the hosts of the party, were just using it as an ice-breaker, like a version of spin-the-bottle where you could actually know for sure if the other person secretly liked you, or was willing to try making out, or really wanted you to screw them senseless. Relationships might or might not be destroyed by the end of the evening, but since everyone has their secret yearnings, most of the time both parties turned out to have one (or more).
She was sitting at the back, near the kitchen, and I asked her why. Turned out the fun and games with the Permissions unit had already gotten started around the kitchen table. It wasn't like the device wasn't portable, it was the same tiara-style model that had been state-of-the-art at the trial and now, only a short time later, was just slightly obsolete and suitable for rent. But it worked best if you could get the participants to look directly at one another and provide the right sort of cues to make them think about what was being suggested, so they'd set their game up around the table in the traditional way. Acting as the essential spinning bottle was an empty Estonian 'Ston' vodka, with an oddly beautiful and brightly colored label.
They were only just warming up, and no-one had gotten too serious about it yet. So we circulated around the party and left them to it, talked to all her friends and having a few drinks. Things were going really well and we were all having a great time.
Soon it was starting to get a little late, and a few couples had already slipped away to get a little private time in one of the bedrooms, and so somehow everyone collectively decided that it was time to take it to the next level and make full use of this seasons interesting new gadget. While they tried to round up the appropriate number of players to fit around the table without too many impossible conflicts of race, religion or species, my wolfess asked the female who was currently holding onto the centerpiece of their game if she could borrow it for a second. "I just want to ask my new friend a question," she suggested gently, warm eyes full of unspoken promise, then grabbed the Permissions unit and unceremoniously dropped it onto my head, where it was snug and slightly warm against my scales with waste heat and the low humming of compact electronics.
The early versions of the device took a while to calibrate fully to a new user, with thirty seconds recommended and a minute advised for good results, which meant that when playing it was always the previously selected participant who got handed it, otherwise there were inconvenient delays. To pass the small interlude that resulted, I asked her how her photos from our day at the zoo had turned out.
"Some of them were quite good," she said happily. "I uploaded them to may favorite site just after lunchtime yesterday. I especially like the one of the lion roaring."
Then she named the site.
At which point my brain practically fused, as suddenly every terrible detail came together. The guy on the website wasn't the one stalking us and wolf-whistling at us as we kissed. She was the guy on the website. She clearly played a male character online, so she could indulge in her vicious fantasies without becoming the target of all the male fans who shared them.
And yet she was obviously attracted to guys, which meant that I'd gotten everything about what she wanted to do precisely and exactly backward. I remembered her peculiar comment about the male lion and tried desperately not to think about the sort of things she so very much wanted to do.
There was a faint click as the calibration cycle completed, after a legally admissible full minute of calculation. I could have sworn that only a few seconds had passed.
"Do you want me?" she asked passionately, looking straight into my eyes and caressing the side of my muzzle with one persuasive hand. "Would you let me do _anything_to you?"
I very calmly removed the Permissions kit and put it back down the table with the faintest click as it struck the smoothly polished surface. The display on the front read '100% Positive Yes'.
And then I bolted.
Which is why I am hiding in a trash bin from the most attractive female I ever met, where I intend to stay for at least an hour or two, waiting for my heartbeat to return to normal and maybe catching a little sleep, making sure to exit well before the garbage truck comes around in the morning to collect the rest of the trash, including me. Because I know what her definition of doing anything stretches to - she described it with horrifying eloquence - and some defective part of my mind, deep down in the garbage just like I am now, is quite willing to let her do all those things because it seems I love her. She speaks to something that is broken in me.
The judges who tried the case with the snow leopardess, in their final verdict, concluded that of course there was a statute of limitations on what you really wanted, just like anything else. Based on the testimony of the expert witnesses in the case, they rounded up the best guess figure to a legally convenient number of hours. It takes time for the subconscious to reach a new assessment.
Which means that if she finds me any time before morning, she can pretty much do whatever she likes to me with total legal impunity. I can't even claim that I'm not fully aware of exactly what that would consist of, and I'm sure as hell not willing to find out just how much something as trivial as love could hold her back from the edge.
What I don't know is what I should do about it. Hell, I don't even know what I should do tomorrow morning.
Maybe I should call her?
This short story (just under 5000 words) was inspired after I read a series called 'Guessing Games' by a new user called Vachir (https://www.sofurry.com/view/704264). The vicious little party game described therein, in which nobody really wins and everyone gets screwed, made me wonder what would happen if the events described came under legal scrutiny. Because purely depending on what one of the players really wanted, it was either a thrilling submission or a brutal assault. Maybe even she couldn't decide which one it was at the time.
Which got me thinking just how handy it would be if you actually knew just what someone wanted and how far they were willing to go. Or would it? Because I think about lots of things, and although I'd never actually do any of them, what if my subconscious disagreed? It could get quite scary, very quickly, even without the unlikely meeting that drives the suspense in the story above. The law has always had trouble keeping up with technology, and consent is a very hard thing to define. It goes without saying that I will not be playing spin-the-bottle anytime soon.