FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The boy was lucky he couldn't be heard. The chatter of those around him, the roaring and honking of the taxis, the constant barrage of advertisements around him, it was a blessing in disguise as a curse. His fur, once a brilliant white, was filled with dirt and gravel over the years, his gray hair undergoing much of the same. The streets made him, but they could also break him if they felt. He saw them line up, if it could even be called a line, the cluster of colors gathered around a terminal, each swiping their cards, the voice telling them that their "transaction was successful", and then dispensing a few pills before the cluster dissipated.

He wouldn't be caught dead trying to bruteforce it during the usual hours. The boy waited until the early morning before he began his little trek towards the terminal, when no one would be around to see him. In his pocket, his fingers were dancing around until he felt it. He pulled it out, a small device, no bigger than a pocket calculator, but much more powerful. The ads called it a PNC: short for Portable Networked Console. A more advanced version of the archaic PDA, though they definitely didn't seem such. His had a monochrome screen, showing black on green, a QWERTY keyboard, and it was filled to the brim with numerous dataports. The outside casing was scratched, along with numerous marks on the screen, he had only miraculously found the device on a sidewalk one night.

The feline fished around in his pocket again until he pulled out a small cable, telephone interface jacks on each end, the words "PROPERTY OF WESLEY TELECOM" printed along the length of it. The standard of most devices nowadays. He quickly plugged one end into the PNC and the other into the terminal. The CRT screen of the terminal flashed white before it displayed a console, awaiting "the operator's" commands. He loved the feeling he got doing this. The world of machines was the only one that would pay attention to him, bowing down to his every order. His strange, fluffy, organic, emotional kind would only ignore his cries for help, passing by him as if he was just part of the wall. His thumbs tapped away at PNC's keyboard until a spinning cursor appeared on both the terminal and his device. And soon after, a few pills dropped out of the dispenser, the terminal thanking him for his "transaction".

The pills were said to taste like a "full-course meal", but he couldn't taste anything. Maybe it was because he had them so many times, or maybe that's what it actually tasted like. It said it had zucchini, but what even was zucchini, anyways? Maybe the type of pill it was? He shook it off, he wasn't going to spend the rest of his life wondering about the consistency of some pill. Pills weren't going to get him off the streets, much less into shelter. He was only nine, or at least he thought he was. He didn't know much about life, but he knew this wasn't how most people spent it. He continued his trek down to his usual resting place behind the long-abandoned apartments, near an old payphone.

Buried in the jungles of urban decay, the boy saw himself in the public utility. The both of them were cast off, ignored by the masses as they have their own problems to worry about. But enough about that. He looked around behind the stand and found it, a small tape recorder of his, one he had picked up near an electronics store. He picked it up, holding it to the receiver, and pressed play. A string of tones flew out of the tape, followed by several beeping noises. Redboxing. Generating tones to simulate the insertion of currency. Speaking the language of the machines. He plugged in the PNC again, one to him and one to the "TELCO/MODEM" port.

He held the receiver up to his ear as he waited for the line to connect, his PNC cradled in his hands. There seemed a strange beauty in the noise of the connecting line. The beeps, the static, machine-to-machine was poetic in a way. The language he heard was not one of culture or history, but instead one born of the bit and the byte. The one and the zero. The transistor and processor. It wasn't designed to be heard by his organic ears, much less understood, but he could pick out what transpired before him. The systems signaling what they are, their brand, model number, baud rate, the two machines deciding on data protocols within seconds, it sounded so alien despite being born in the same world he was. For about twenty seconds, the voice of the machines was all that spoke to him. The PNC spat out jumbled letters and numbers until the boy came across a familiar screen.

WELCOME TO THE RISING SUN BBS 212-555-7786 (RSUN)

PLEASE [L]OG IN OR [C]REATE AN ACCOUNT

He stared at the screen for a few moments. Here it was. Home sweet home. He tapped L, and recalled his credentials.