Part I – Dark Times in Glow City
#1 of Moral Obsolescence and Motor Oil
Warning: Contains Yote. Why? To quote Kurst: "It's All About 'Yote." Disclaimer: Contains Furry Smut, most notably Male/Machine with some suggestive M/M back story. If you are underage, don't peek. I wrote this story up as a literary exercise, wondering if I could capture the feel of 80's Cyperpunk in a generic universe. I'm not doing anything new here, and I'm writing in well defined literary boundaries, so let me know how I did. In case anyone was wondering, the core of micro-fusion reactor no. 5 was indeed Happy Fun Ball. Do Not (make the engineers' mistake, and) Taunt Happy Fun Ball(tm) !!!
Moral Obsolescence and Motor Oil
Part I - Dark Times in Glow City
2006 by Eldyran
"It has become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our morality." - Algbert Weinstein, Coyote.
As the dark, stocky canine figure stepped out of the open tram tube's doors into the drank urban night drizzle, he tucked a cigar into his muzzle and fished around in his grimy, oil stained BDU pants for a light. While the acidic rain from the purple neon sky above pelted his torn and frayed poncho, the coyote drew out a single matchstick, and with a quick flick of his left wrist, stuck it against his other forearm.
The matchstick, invented centuries ago, ignited with a sulfurous flare. The artificial forearm it illuminated, however, was a more recent invention. Bundled with thick strands of electrically reflexive silicone myomer fiber, sheathed in high tensile strength titanium alloy, it was the pinnacle of advanced prosthetic replacement.
At least it was a decade ago.
Now the arm, along with the matchstick, found itself in obsolescence. Yet despite this, both found some continued, practical use in this advanced age of technical thaumaturgy. The coyote drew the tip of the flame up to his muzzle, and with a deep inhale, the clipped tip of the cigar momentarily blazed a bright orange cinder.
Like most things in Glow City, the matchstick, its usefulness spent, sputtered and went out.
It fell to the ground, joining the rest of the filth in the refuse filled ferrocrete street. The metallic paw ran briefly through the coyote's oily head fur as the tram car doors behind him slid shut. With a rumble, the car plunged back down into the Cretian labyrinth of mass transit tubes beneath the metroplex sprawl.
Technically, the New Canadian Coalition owned the cybernetic arm, paid for with taxpayer credits. A coyote named Kylson Reese owned the meaty bicep that the cybernetic forearm was anchored to, although once again on a technicality, the NCC owned him as well. After the harrowing Tetro offensive on the Venezuelan border during the petroleum scare of 2026, the NCC granted him use of the replacement arm in reward for meritorious service above and beyond the call of duty. Like the veteran, the NCC could recall use of the artificial limb at any point in time.
But Kylson doubted they ever would. The arm, like himself, was outdated, in desperate need of basic maintenance, and most decidedly used. The limb itself was just a simple prosthetic replacement, with no bells or whistles. No increased myomer density for enhanced strength, no platinum laced nerve grafts for superior articulation. In fact the only after market modification Kylson made to the arm was the addition of a retractable, reinforced, mono-edged spur along the forearm compartment; guaranteed never to break or dull for the life of the initial installation.
The coyote never considered testing this warranty, however, as he purchased the concealable weapon second hand. For what the Ripperdoc offered on the modification and instillation, Kylson couldn't refuse. The offer was a steal, and the doctor assured Kylson that the previous owner had no further need of the mod.
At least not anymore.
The coyote took a deep pull off the cigar, and started down the dimly lit street. Aside from torn up bags of molding trash and the occasional burned out husk of a vehicle, the street was otherwise empty. Few dared to be out among the thrill gangs playground after dark, but the coyote had little choice. His graveyard shift processing freshly caught fish at the docks just ended, and the only cheap mode of transportation still running was the ubiquitous tube. The coyote picked up any partial shifts on the wharf offered to him, and even though he reeked of fish guts, and pasty chum gummed up his spur compartment, work meant cred. Cred meant food and making rent for another month. Besides, ever since the incident that marked Glow City's namesake, the trollers brought back fewer and fewer fish out of the bay each year.
As the stinging rain continued to pelt his armed forces surplus poncho, the coyote pulled several puffs off the cigar, and looked to the dark green glow hanging low in the stormy night sky to the west. Although Glow City's actual name was Davenport, few still used it. Five years ago Davenport's micro-fusion reactor no. 5 had a slight 'opps' in its magnetic containment field. Another fine product of the Renchu corporation.
You should see their toaster ovens.
The coyote had heard that the bright, white, rapidly expanding, all consuming sphere was almost a beautiful thing to behold, at least to those watching in safe earth orbit. Now all that remained of the site was a glowing crater a hundred meters deep, half a kilometer wide. Most of the fallout fell across the bay, sparing most of the local residents, but lingering low intensity radiation prompted many to pack up and leave. Despite having the highest rates of melanoma in the province, Glow City became the cheapest place to live in all the re-established Northwest Territories. Down and outs of all types flocked to the disaster, hoping to eek out a meager living under the greenish glow of Davenport's new namesake.
As the dancing, florescent green glow of the western sky reflected off his chrome colored irises, Kylson flipped his enhanced vision into the UV spectrum, and watched the reactive particles from the distant crater spray up into the ebony sky like a deadly, but beautiful fountain. The stock Cyberdyne Systems replacement eyes were another red badge of courage from the VSA conflict, but unlike the lower right arm, Kylson added quite a few modifications to them; some of gray market origin and quasi-legality. Although the mods saved his tail quite a few times since their instillation, he often regretted their initial cost.
The credits could be replaced with manual labor. It wasn't the monetary cost that bothered him.
The close proximity of the twin Vulcan auto cannon muzzle flashes in that fateful guerrilla ambush may have scorched his retinas, but they could not burn out the memories of the horrors they had witnessed. He followed his orders. He did what he was told. He burned their villages and he slaughtered their mothers and he buried their children. When it was all over he came back home in once piece.
Well, mostly.
Still the cost was high. He traded in his outmoded morality, his very flesh, for the life blood of thirty weight motor oil. Recent advances in polymer chemistry cheapened the steep barter even further; with synthetic petroleum now easily replicated in the lab, organic crude became all but worthless now. Sometimes the coyote tried not too think about it. Other times that is all he could think of.
Kylson shuffled his way through the atherosclerosic side streets of the decaying sprawl, and within minutes the broken face of his apartment complex came into view. The coyote had seen a lot of hovels in his travels, but the sight of his home illicited an internal, momentary wince each and every time. He could spend exactly five seconds conveying the grandeur of his residence, and that was embellishing most details. The crumbling, decadent structure had all the hominess and cheer of a firebombed state run abortion clinic. Kylson strode through the hole where the front entrance doors used to hang askew, trying not to trip on the broken tiled floor. With a flick of his metallic paw, the cigar flew and bounced on the grimy street behind him, the fire of its cherry sizzling on the wet, cracked pavement.
After safely disposing of the fire hazard, Kyleson strode past the elevator doors, out of service since '31, and up the chipped and graffiti covered stairs to the fourth floor. The rank of mildew and discarded trash in the hallway slipped into his nostrils, welcoming him home, the scent almost comforting now in these long years that seemed to drag on without end. As he approached the door to apartment 414, he noticed a new body slumped over in the middle of the squalid, dark hallway.
He couldn't tell if the prairie dog had been a resident of his building, or just a simple squatter looking for shelter from the biting acid rain, nor did he care. Perhaps he was a simsense junky who had strung out too much on BTL chips, or perhaps he simply asked for a cup of sugar from one of his homicidal neighbors, but that too, didn't matter. No one ever left Glow City; not even in death.
There was a saying here: When Judgment Day came nigh, Glow City and the Sea would fight to see who gave up its dead last.
Kyslon didn't bother checking for vitals. He didn't even spend the five milliseconds it would take to switch his vision to thermo and see how cold the body was. As he stepped over it and unlocked his apartment door, he rolled the corpse on its stomach with a hind foot, and absently checked for a wallet.
Fortune did not smile on this coyote tonight; the wallet was already gone.
Kylson shoved the door open, stepped inside the darkness of his two room efficiency, and slammed the door back shut behind him, throwing the heavy deadbolt in place. His metal paw tips fumbled for the wall switch, but the lights did not come on. The soft, melodic female voice of his apartment chimed in why.
"The Department of Davenport Public Works has randomly selected this section of city grid 978 for power conservation protocol, starting from 2200 hundred hours to 0500 hundred hours. The Department of Public Works apologizes for any inconvenience."
The stocky yote leaned back against the door and gave a slow sigh. He flipped on his image intensifier, and the the objects in his apartment loomed before him in florescent green hues. The coyote meandered his way through the chaos of the living room to the joint kitchenette and bathroom, kicking empty beer cans out from under his hind feet as he went. He threw open the door to his rusty refrigerator, and the the momentary flare of florescent light bulb overloaded his enhanced vision. Kylson shut his eyes and drew out some wrapped up newspaper from underneath his poncho before throwing the purloined fish meat onto an empty rack inside the moldy fridge. He took out a packet of instant soy, closed the fridge door, and tore open the packet with his fangs. He didn't bother adding any flavor drops to the food-substitute, instead swallowing it whole.
To wash away the mud-like flavor from his muzzle, he went to the sink and turned on the corroded facet. With a groan of protest from the old plumbing, a burbling stream of yellow tinted water fell from the spout. He pulled his muzzle down to the contaminated water and drank. The taste of Glow City was worse than its look or even its smell. After turning off the facet, the short yote stripped off his clothes right there in the kitchen. He threw a chum covered whitebeater shirt and BDU camo pants in the living room, joining an already festering pile of soiled laundry in a corner there. Kylson hung the poncho over the back of a broken metal chair before going into the utility closet in the kitchen.
His paws pulled out some type of compact, folded up machine; its servos well lubed, its pneumatic liquid recently replaced. The muscular coyote carried the machine by a handle on its back to the dingy shower stall, the heavy object causing his gait to stagger slightly, his pudgy belly swaying a bit from side to side. With a grunt, he set the device on the floor, flipped open up a keypad access panel, and input a program number.
Less work than going down a street or two and finding some call guy. Also, unlike the call guy, the machine was guaranteed sterile.
The coyote punched 'Execute' and flipped the panel closed before stepping into the shower stall and turning on the water. A sudden wave of shock poured over the canine as the ice cold spray doused his oily, fishy fur. Kyslon kept his eyes open under the stinging, acidic water, contaminated with fresh overflow from the recent rainfall, and waited as the slight corrosive burned away any built up proteins on the optics. He stood there for a passive moment, his mind lost in the view, almost as hypnotic as watching a sheet of rain slide down a window during a heavy thunderstorm.
His paws worked their way through his greasy red and off white fur with black tips. Small scales and strands of fish guts swirled down the shower drain before plummeting to the sewer system below, almost as clean as the city that feed it. He knew he only traded one set of reek for another, but at least his fur would be clean. Old military habits were hard to break. He grabbed his bushy tail and worked diligently on that for a while; one of his few vain obsessions. After feeling sufficiently clean, he reached outside the tepid shower spray and depressed a button on the unknown mechanism.
The automaton powered up, a throbbing, electric hum reverberating deep inside its chassis. Two red neon irises blazed to furious life, the artificial pupils focusing on the naked, showing coyote, then constricting with a single minded purpose. The multi-limbed machination unfolded with a whirl of servos and pneumatics, the artificial dervish a virtual flurry of hard steel, heavy plastic polymers, and synthetic rubber gaskets. A pair of gasping arms seized the canine in its adamant, steely grip, slamming the coyote up against the shower stall wall with brutal force. When Kyslson looked back through the shower spray, a skeletal, metallic canine head grinned back at him with a faux visage of laughter.
The skeletal arms around the rigid coyote's body tightened, and Kyslon yelped out as the vertebrae in his lower back and upper shoulders gave a series of sick pops. When the constricting arms relaxed slightly, the coyote's body eased into the cold embrace of his emotionless lover with a slow exhale of released tension. Another pair of arms encircled the short canine, and the cold metallic paws worked their way over inch of his wet fur, caressing his soft flesh with uncanny precision. The silicon grips on its paw tips inched their way to his sheath, already full of pent up arousal and tension. As the ridged, pliable grips squeezed down upon the vulnerable flesh, Kyslon gasped out, his canine body shuddering hard under the shower spray.
With a long drawn out whirl, something cold and unyielding pushed tight against the constricted muscular ring of Kylson's tail hole. A secondary set of auxiliary legs wrapped themselves around his thick, muscular thighs, holding it's meat bag bitch tight in place as the alloyed golem aligned itself into position. A sharp cry escaped the coyote black muzzle lips as the thick, slick metallic probe invaded his tight bowels. His cry soon turned into groans of ecstasy as the probe inside him whirled to life, stimulating every throbbing inch of his sensitive depths. The hard vibration alone almost pushed the coyote over the edge of climax, his swelling prostrate already sending gouts of pre spurting out his hardened member, now spilled from its protective sheath.
As the carnal automation thrust in and out of the frail canine flesh, its digits stroked, pumped the thick, slick yote pole. The ridges of its supple synthetic silicon paw pads pulled at the coyote's fleshy, slippery knot, and Kyslon's paws shot to the shower wall to steady himself, his short barks of pleasure echoing off the grouted tile. His orgasm threated to break at any moment under the tireless, relentless assault of his own creation. The machine breed its creator with futile, single minded drive.
Cold, uncompromising steel sheathed inside hot, quivering flesh.
Three sequential events turned an already lousy night in to a real nut buster, all within seconds of each other. First, the shower spay abruptly shut off. Second, the power cell in the chthonian machination died, its entire charge depleted. Finally, there came a strong, instant knock at his front door.
Any of these things occurring individually would have pissed off the coyote. Taken all three at once, and the heavyset canine gave a bestial growl before putting his metallic fist through the ceramic wall of the shower stall. With a groan of orgasmic denial, Kylson squirmed under the adamantine embrace of his inert lover, his prostrate throbbing hard against the mechanical invasion of his aching depths. While the coyote pried the cold, pneumatic digits off his red, swollen knot, his own metal paw taking its place, the sassy female voice of his apartment chimed in.
"Attention. You have exceeded your weekly water ration. The Department of Public Works apologizes for any inconvenience."
"Go to fraggin' Hell, you digital cunt ..." Kyslon growled out through gritted teeth, his muzzle lips tight against his gums as his paw pumped up and down his aching length with furious abandon, desperately seeking release. He flexed his ass and speared himself back into the probe as another set of insistent knocks pounded away at his front door. The deep pressure of orgasm crept slow, taunting him onward, until he threw his head back with a throaty, primal growl of satisfaction. His meaty canine frame shuddered, bucked as he howled out hard, thick ropes of yote cum splattering against the broken tile of the shower stall wall. His howl refused to let go of his throat, the cords reverberating with intense relief as his heavy, furry sacs emptied their massive, salty load endlessness into the air.
After it was over, he leaned into the broken ceramic of the wall in front him and panted hard for several more minutes. The knocking ceased. With a slow exhale Kyslon unpried himself from his creation and pulled on a bare thread bathrobe before returning to the living room. He looked out the eye hole and his fish-eye view caught the forms of a mammoth female tiger and a shorter male wolf standing outside his apartment, looking at the door expectantly. The tiger wore a black uniform with a badge and carried a rather large hand cannon. Her cohort dressed in a fine tench coat and had on one of those cheesy fedora's one saw in the old black and white vids. Real customers these two.
Kyslon wasn't wanted, per say, but some of the odd jobs he took were shady in origin. A cold sweat broke over the coyote's brow as he unbolted the door and opened it. The two law enforcement personnel blinked down at the short yote in the dim lighting of the hallway.
"Specialist Reese, of the 23rd Steel Lynx, support division?" The black wolf asked, taking out a pocket secretary and confirming the information on it with a quick glance.
"Thats me. Whats this all about?"
"Do you know a Lance Corporal Micheal Peers?" The lupine continued, his green eyes locked on the confused yote.
"Yeah, we fought together in VSA. I haven't seen him in years though. Now answer my question will ya?"
The tiger shot a stern look at the coyote, before she answered.
"We regret to inform you, Mr. Reese, that your former squad leader was found dead in his apartment this morning." Her swirling, cobalt blue eyes watched his reaction. Kyslon found his shoulder leaning up against the door before he caught himself. He wasn't aware he almost fell in shock, and he gripped the door trim for support, his metallic paw splintering the soft wood there. Memories of the war flooded his mind, memories of Micheal. Hard memories. Brief moments of ecstasy, camaraderie, swirled in with an eternity of gunfire and bloodshed.
"Mr. Reese?" The ebony wolf asked, tilting his head, "Are you okay?"
"Yeah ..." Kylson replied, shock stealing into his dumb bones.
The pair of law enforcement fired off a series of questions, but the war veteran detected an emptiness in them that set off internal klaxons deep within his gut. While he responded with his own non-committal parley, Kyslon flipped through his optics. His IR thermo graph showed the tiger's core body temperature to run two whole degrees centigrade above normal. When he flipped to X-scan mode, she didn't have a single bit of ware in her lithe body. The budget for the local PD wouldn't allow for her to get a gene-splice, and Kyslon darkly suspected her body needed the higher metabolism requirement to fuel the manipulation of mana energy.
Why in the world would the PD send over magical support? Kyslon thought, growing even more suspicious. He glanced over to the homicide detective. Aside from sporting some eye ware, his meat body was intact. The readout from his tech analyzer showed the eyes to be a Funafuti model, FOE-332's to be exact, an Yakuza favorite.
Oh yeah, just what I needed to round out the perfect night Kylson thought, A spell slinging donut hole and yak corpse sniffer showing up at my door, asking too many questions, just like in the vids.
What bothered the coyote the most was the lack of mods in the optics. In the war, Kylson learned which villagers were covert guerrilla fighters just by looking deep into their eyes. You didn't just tear out your eyes unless you had something to hide. Kylson swapped back to normal vision and looked deep into the florescent green eyes of the wolven detective.
The soulless eyes of a corrupt cop.
"Well thanks for your time, Mr. Reese." the orange tiger rumbled down at the coyote, "In case we need to ask you further questions, please don't leave the city limits."
"Yeah sure," Kylson replied, hoping the appearance of shock covered up his own lies. The two law enforcement turned and left, stepping over the body of the prairie dog in the process. They didn't even bother to call it in. Kylson shut the door and got dressed quickly. He didn't have much time. He was being framed, and those two were just here to take measurements.
He went over to his fold out couch and fished his old service pistol from underneath the rotten cushions, doing a quick field strip of it, before reassembling the firearm. Once he finished, he loaded a full clip and tucked it into a concealable holder in his blue jeans. The Glock wasn't much, but was all he had. The underpowered 9mm lacked the stopping power to penetrate the new ballistic weaves now sown standard into even trendy teenage GAPE apparel. Maybe the coyote would pick up something more powerful in a vending machine on the way to Micheal's apartment.
The yote opened his apartment door and peaked down each side of the dark hallway. There was no one there. The body of the prairie dog was gone though.
Well, mostly.
Kylson stepped out, locked the door behind him, and stepped over the organic mess that was left for more desperate organ divers. He tore out of his complex and headed back into the Stygian night, intent on figuring out who killed his squad leader, and why they wanted to pin it all on him. Kylson hoped that this wicked night wouldn't get any worse, but deep in his seasoned gut, Kylson knew better.
Dark times lay ahead.
Dark Times in Glow City. ~ Fin Part I ~
Well chummers, hope you liked it. Let me know if you gummed up your tortoise, or my monotone drone lulled you to sleep. Criticisms, Comments, Smart Remarks all welcome. Flames are generally laughed at. Poking holes in my atrocious grammar style is flat out hilarious.
What does Part II hold? Old means new when a gene-spliced skoon corporate mercenary enters the picture. Is he part of the framing, or will he too, be drawn into the murky shadows in this tangled military web of deadly lies, cover up, and deception? The shadows of Glow City run far, run deep ...