FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

It wasn't too bad, Trevor thought, standing in the middle of the pathway with people walking around him. It was busier than he'd expected, but people minded their own business, didn't even look at him.

He nodded to himself. "I can do this." He stepped out of the simulation and into his lobby, then into the real world. He looked out of the landed hover at the others waiting there to be needed. There weren't a lot of people here, but he could see the crowd on the pathway at the edge of the lot.

There were a lot of people. Had the simulation been off? He'd used the city's history call traffic report to build it. Maybe it was the distance creating the illusion. That had to be it. The crowd wouldn't be that heavy once he was among them.

Hopefully.

He opened the hover and the smells of New Orleans entered. The air was thick with humidity and scents of people and less pleasant smells he couldn't place and decided against checking the city reports to identify. Even New Vegas didn't smell like this, and the population was double that of New Orleans.

New Vegas was six times larger, having more accessible land than the bunch of islands that was New Orleans, the proximity of the old space elevator in the gulf had made this the place to live in, back when they were the only way to get out of the atmosphere. With hovers taking over almost all passenger transport to the stations, maybe New Orleans would slowly lose enough citizens to drop to a more comfortable density.

He stepped outside and shivered. This close to the eastern seaboard the temperature dropped significantly. In a few months, they'd get snow. He gave himself pants, shirt, and a jacket, added insulation, then made his way through the hovers.

The crowd was thicker than his simulation. He'd miscalculated something, or this neighborhood had a thicker density than the city average. He considered stepping back, rerunning the simulation. Trevor shuddered, so many people.

He remembered the crowd, their excitement, his brothers running around, their father and uncles trying to keep up with them. Being alone, the crowd pressing in on him. Being scared.

He erased the crowd, the sounds, the smells, made himself alone in the city. Tried to bring his breathing under control. He wasn't six, he was nearly fifty. And the crowd hadn't crushed him. Elliot had heard his cries, rescued him.

Trevor looked at the empty walkway. Wished he could keep it like this, but his solitude was imaginary; an entopic creation. Trying to walk on that 'empty' pathway would lead to people walking into him.

He should have landed himself on Bobby's building, but he'd have to override travel regulation to do that. His hover wasn't designated as public transport. He'd have to explain to Tyson why, or worse, to Terry. Terrence hadn't grown any patient with Trevor's dislike of being among people as they'd aged. He'd expected being a father to a girl and a clearly straight boy would have taught his brother that people were different and that was fine, but Terry's tolerance didn't extend far beyond his children.

Trevor canceled the entopic override, and the people returned. A lot of them. He hunched down on himself and stepped into the crowd, calling up the direction overlay to guide him to Bobby's house.

The walk there was nerve-wracking. Unlike in the simulation, people bumped into him, apologizing absently as they continued. Trevor wanted to create an entopic override to force everyone to stay away from him, but it would register within the city's system and the presence of an Orr would attract the media.

If there was one thing Trevor disliked more than a crowd of people, was a crowd of media people. These people weren't targeting him. They didn't even realize he was there, more absorbed by whatever they were doing via their implant. The media would hound him. Ask questions, ignore his desire to be left alone. A lot of the smaller media reporters had been ignoring the general orders to leave his family alone since it was easy for them to dissolve their company when they were found in breach of contract and join another.

The lawyers were looking at reworking the contracts, but they'd been written in the time of larger companies within the corporation. So none of the rules were in place to force individuals to obey them.

Companies had no right of consent, people did. So could Orr corp write a contract that forced individuals to do its bidding? As far as Trevor was concerned the answer was yes, but lawyers were.... They were lawyers and had been discussing that for the last two years, ever since Tony's altercation with a reporter filming the two of them having sex without Tony's consent. That specific case had been easy to resolve, the man hadn't disclosed he was a reporter, hadn't asked Tony if he wanted to be recorded. So Tony decking him had been judged in his brother's favor, but it had brought to light the push for any kind of news on his family.

Another bump, a glare and a 'pay attention to where you're walking' from the woman this time and Trevor forced himself to look at the real world. He was a few blocks from Bobby's address, but this area was filled with towers made of plain material. He called up information about the area. He was in a government assigned residential neighborhood.

That explained the towers, but not what Trevor was doing here. Bobby was a successful creator. He had a house, some land. The raccoon had mentioned a second apartment in a city, so Trevor checked, maybe that was the official address, and it was at the edge of this neighborhood. Not everyone wanted others to know where their houses were located. Trevor had an apartment in New Vegas so no one would link his Pakesh identity to his Orr one.

No, the address for Bobby was right in the middle of the neighborhood. There had to be an error in the system. He pushed through the crowd until he leaned against a building, closed his eyes, and dived into the city's registry.

Bobby Power.

He found his information, his address, his company, all genuine. This time he looked for hidden connections to other property. Was this apartment a front? Why would Bobby need to hide he was successful? Something about his father? The man was a criminal, so maybe.

Was Bobby a criminal too? No. Trevor refused to believe his friend was anything but the successful businessman he'd said he was.

Only...

Bobby didn't own any property. No house, no land. His company was real, but nothing like the success Bobby talked about when they met up in the Lands. His income was...

Pitiful.

No wonder Bobby was in government assigned housing. His monthly income seemed to be enough to get an apartment of his own, but his expenses took a lot of that. What was he spending it on? The trail led to a handful of medical companies. What was Bobby being treated for that he had to pay for it? He couldn't get into them to find out without a warrant.

Someone bumped into him, reminding Trevor he wasn't in his chair, at home. He wanted to be home, alone. He wanted to figure out what Bobby was up to, who the man claiming to be his friend was. He could do that through diving deeper into the system; or, he could go to his apartment and find out the truth from there.

His government assigned apartment Trevor reminded himself. What would he find out about his friend there?

* * * * *

The building Trevor approached was a nondescript gray surface from the ground to as high as the sky and took over the entire block. Assigned housing put as many people as possible in one building; with that building being located close to business areas so they could find work and move out to their own, more spacious, apartment. Trevor accessed the housing files and looked over this building's stats, a ninety-three percent occupancy rate, with a fifty-seven percent turnover rate every three months, and it was managed under budget.

He checked other housing buildings and was impressed. This one had a higher occupancy, higher turnover rate, and lower budget expenditure than most others. Trevor was impressed, looking over the numbers, this building might be the best-managed building within the corporation.

He entered and noticed how dirty and smelly the lobby was. Crates were stacked against the wall and bags littered the bare permacrete floor. Trevor checked the building's records and found no complaints from the occupants. No system registered as faulty, so maybe this was in the process of being cleared out after a fault? He did wonder why they didn't have a temporary entopic overlay while the work happened?

The lift was old, a box operated through magnetic induction. Trevor thought that technology had been entirely phased out thirty years ago. It creaked noisily as it went up.

On a hunch, Trevor stopped on the fiftieth floor. The floor and walls were bare permacrete again, cracked and patched inexpertly. How did someone crack permacrete? The stuff was used to build habitats in space because it could withstand small impacts.

Stuff littered the floor that Trevor did his best to walk around to the opening on the left. At least this room was cleaner, having only a couple of bags in the corner. The floor and walls were free of grime. The medical bed in the center activated when it sensed his presence, running through its startup routines. Trevor used his authority to look under the display.

The operating system was twenty years out of date, but it still showed as current. Could that happen accidentally? Trevor parsed the code and decided that no, it couldn't. At least this case wasn't an accident. Someone had added code to lie to the management system. How safe was this bed to use if the last time it was updated was twenty years ago?

Basic medical care hadn't changed that much in twenty years, but these things were supposed to see to all the medical needs short of requiring an expert to operate. Trevor couldn't think of any kind of healing that needed an operator these days.

He brought up the corporate directory as he returned to the lift and went up a hundred floor, exiting on the hundred-fiftieth one by the time the search for who oversaw assigned housing returned a name, and he was happy to see he was family.

"Jim," he greeted his great-great-uncle when his face appeared. This hallway was slightly cleaner, and the medical room was free of anything but the medical bed.

"Trevor, it's been a while, to what do I owe the pleasure?"

"How is assigned housing overseen?" the medical bed's code was also twenty years out of date, with the same added code for it to show as current.

"It's primarily automated," the tiger replied, searching Trevor's call projection. "Sensors and programs keeping track of the goings-on. What brought this up?"

"So, no one's involved? What happens when a system fails, or a tenant needs something fixed?"

"Each building has an overseer to make sure what isn't automatically fixed gets looked after."

"How are they paid?"

"A basic salary plus an operating budget, the goal with assigned housing is to encourage them to move on to better jobs, you know that. Even with the overseer."

Trevor leaned back against the bed, ignoring its demanding beeps. "What's the turn over on the overseers?"

Jim looked to the side, consulting reports. "Not as high as with the tenants, but that's to be expected. On average, they stay with the position for a year and a half, why?"

Trevor sent his great-great-uncle the building's address. "How about this one?" he accessed investigations sites and looked through them for the resale value on program updates for medical tables.

Jim whistled. "This woman's been there for twenty-five years." He read some more. "She's been doing a decent job too. I guess her ambitions were to manage a building."

"No, she isn't," Trevor replied. "She's swindling the corporation. The place is a mess. I don't think the cleaning bots have run in years. The medical tables are out of date."

"That can't be," Jim read something. "According to the reports, she's been filing for all the appropriate updates, the maintenances have been done."

"She found a crack in the code, Jim. I'm here. I checked two medical beds already. Twenty years out of date. The grime is visible and there are crates and bags lying around waiting to be picked up. They've been here for a long time. I'm guessing she's run her budget just short of the maximum she's allowed."

The tiger nodded. "Every year just below the limit."

"I'm off duty right now, and busy with something, so I can't investigate this, but you should send someone to look the place over, have the code in the building locked down before she gets wind of it and tries to undo her work."

"If you're off duty, what are you doing in the building? Never mind that. What are you doing in New Orleans?" Jim asked, dismayed. "When's the last time you left the islands?"

"Five years ago, on that mandated vacation dad and my boss agreed to."

"Not what I mean and you know it, Trevor. You haven't left the islands since you were a kid. Not on your own."

"I'm looking into something. A friend seems to have vanished. So I thought I'd check his apartment in case he was just ignoring me."

"You could have sent someone to do the check, you have ground officers you can task."

"Ty suggested getting out here might be good for me." Trevor shrugged. "And there isn't any legal reason for me to be here. I'm concerned, not legally obligated, I'd have to use my name to get officers here and only my boss knows who I am. I want to keep it that way."

Jim nodded. "I'm glad you listened to your brother, but I wish you'd taken an escort with you."

"Oh right, because giving a military escort to the guy who isn't comfortable in crowds will be the best way to keep those crowds from forming. No one even knows I'm here. I came as Pakesh, not Orr. And Ty was right, I need the exposure. Even dad got over his phobia without any program work. I can do it too."

"Okay, but be careful. Vanguard has people inside our borders, and they've been too quiet recently."

Trevor rolled his eyes.

"I'll see what I can do about locking down the programs in the building without official notice of something being wrong, and I'll send someone."

"You want me to make a complaint as Pakesh? I can lodge a visual one even if I can't about the state of the medical beds. And I have a reason to be here, I'm visiting a friend."

"Do it, I'll see about finding a reason for it to be escalated higher instead of being handled by the lower echelons. There might be someone there who's in league with the overseer because someone should have complained about the situation already."

Trevor terminated the connection and access the comment section of the building's interface, putting pictures and writing his opinions and reasons for being here. As he was about to officially file it, he realized there was something off with the interface. It was static. There were none of the usual back and forth of notifications systems like the temperature of the air circulation system, the floors the lift was currently on. Or the usual barrage of ads from the outside, displayed in a window because a building like this didn't have the authority to stop them entirely.

Someone had put up a shell within the building to intercept all interactions with the outside. This was why no one knew about its state. They left a comment, and the person behind the shell, probably the overseer, didn't allow anything negative to continue beyond it. It also allowed her to prevent outside programs from simply getting in and looking over the state.

Trevor removed his comments, he'd send them from outside, and dismissed the interface. He considered taking the stairs; he wasn't sure he should step in the antiquated lift knowing what he now knew, but he had a hundred and thirty-eight more floors to go. He had the stamina, but he didn't want to brave them, considering the state of the halls.

The hallway to Bobby's apartment was as dirty as the two others. How did his friend live here and not do anything about this? He could ask to be moved to a new building. His work was mobile. Even if all his clients were in this area, transit was efficient, if not always fast.

He announced his presence and waited. It was possible Bobby wasn't there. Probable, in fact, considering the information he had, but--

The door opened and a bleary-eyed ferret stood there.

"Hello," Trevor greeted him, then found he had no idea what to say.

"You have my order?" the ferret asked.

"No, I'm here to see Bobby Power."

The ferret shrugged and stepped back into the apartment, leaving the door open. Trevor stepped in and closed it. An overlay applied itself, giving the walls a bright yellow color. The table was red, the couch the ferret sat back on was black velvet, a deer sat on the other end. The food preparation area had a few dishes on it waiting to be recycled. The room was smaller than Trevor expected, with a wall and a door on the other side.

He disconnected from the room's projected overlay and it remained much the same, except for the vibrant colors and the back wall, revealing the room was slightly larger and that space had a bed with a shelf and side table, but no raccoon.

"Where's Bobby?"

"Not here," the deer stood and stretched. He was naked and good looking, if on the thin side. He grinned, noticing Trevor looking him over.

"Do you know where he is and when he'll get back?"

The deer took a plate and dumped its content in the recycler. "No idea. He left a few days ago after a conversation with some officer." He rinsed the plate and placed it in the food printer. "I wasn't behind the overlay, so I overheard his side. He tends to forget that audio privacy is overlay dependent, so he often talks out loud. He was going to Witchita."

"I'm aware. I thought he'd be back by now."

"Me too." The deer pulled the steaming meal out of the printer and grabbed a fork. "If he isn't back in three days, me and Perry are going to have to find new living arrangements."

"You live here?"

"We help Bobby out with the rent."

"This is assigned lodging," Trevor stated, "there is no rent."

The deer shrugged. "What are you going to do? Report us?"

Trevor was tempted, but they weren't breaking the law unless they were here against Bobby's consent; and he couldn't check that until he'd located his friend. Why these two preferred paying instead of getting their own assigned apartment wasn't Trevor's concern.

"So, the renewal is in three days?" If a tenant didn't renew, it meant they had moved to a new place, ideally their own. The deer nodded, digging into the food. It would be plain, but the deer didn't seem to mind. "Do you mind telling me why you stay here, instead of your own apartment?"

"I enjoy the view," the deer said between bites. "Perry... I have no idea why Perry stays, maybe it's easier than having to maintain the place. I do his part, not that there's more that needs cleaning. Bobby's neat." The deer smiled a little and his cock plumped. He and Bobby might be lovers. The deer didn't seem Bobby's type, but this place wasn't Bobby's kind of place either, as far as Trevor had known.

"What can you tell me about Bobby?" Trevor asked.

"You police?"

"As a matter of fact, I am. Inspector Trevor Pakesh, but that isn't why I'm here. I'm concerned about Bobby. I can't get in contact with him."

"Maybe he's working. He goes out to meet clients. Maybe the Wichita Law still needs him."

"What do you know about Bobby's father?"

"Nothing. Perry doesn't know either," the deer added when Trevor glanced at the ferret. "He's in the Lands. He spends every waking moment there unless his body demands attention."

"He was expecting his delivery."

"Stimulants, he doesn't want to miss a second of play."

"Legal ones?" Trevor asked. And Tucker said he was obsessed with the Lands.

"Have to be, don't it? Can't get illegal stims."

Trevor filed the other questions away. This Perry wasn't his case, or who he was interested in. "Do you know if Bobby is in any trouble? Was he acting differently recently?"

The deer shook his head. "He was the same old Bobby as always." He licked his lips and Trevor got the sense it wasn't a conscious action. Odd guy.

Trevor placed Pakesh's contact information in the room's message buffer. "If you hear something. Let me know."

"If you get in contact with him," the deer said, "remind him to renew the room even if he isn't going to be back."

Trevor looked at the items on the bedside table, on the shelf. Those would be stored if the room wasn't renewed. Or they should be. Considering the way the overseer handled the place, maybe they'd be sold off instead. Trevor made a note to renew the room for Bobby if he hadn't found him by then.

Now he needed to get back home and relax for as long as it took to forget he had to be close to so many people.