FSE

Furry search engine

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The deer was tall and though he had been powerfully built in his younger days, age had robbed him of much of his strength. Despite that he walked with dignity and grace, holding his head high and his back straight. He walked without the use of a cane, had probably never contemplated getting one, and gazed out at the world with hazelnut eyes that displayed endless intelligence and good humor.

His fur was going grey but the deer didn't try to hide it with dyes or clever tricks from his hairdressers. Instead he accentuated it with the silver suit he wore, and the intricate golden patterns that he had had engraved on his antlers, probably at a cost greater than the yearly salary of most of the people he was walking amongst. As he walked the deer glanced around him, not with cautious instinct, but with genuine curiosity; drinking in the sights that the street had to offer. He stopped to look at the menu of an Ethiopian restaurant, he paused to watch a few moment's of the President's State of the Union speech on a displayed flat screen television in the front window of a store, and he examined the cars, people and countless other facets of the city, all working together like the fine toothed cogs of an extremely well made watch.

He looked very at peace with the world when I shot him, and that made me feel quite a bit better about pulling the trigger. I was situated in a raised and glass domed courtyard located on the twelfth floor of what had once been a very highly sought after location for companies to put their offices. That buzz had died down rather quickly when it was revealed that the builders had cut so many corners that the whole structure was about as structurally sound as a house of cards soaked in kerosene. That didn't stop me from using it as a blind though, and when my target dropped by, right on time, it proved to be a very valuable location.

The deer had turned towards me when I fired and my bullet passed through his upper chest before punching through the plate glass window on the other side of him; a jagged spiderweb of blood spattered cracks appearing, seemingly as through they had been magicked there by some malevolent sorcerer. The deer stood very still for a moment, reached up to touch the rapidly growing dark stain on the front of his suit, then fell backwards into a sitting position against the wall, already dead.

I cleaned up quickly, sending a text letting a certain somebody know that I would be late for lunch, and then activated the little thermite charges that had been planted in my rifle, retreating down the stairs with the acrid smell of burning metal and plastic filling the air behind me. I'm fond of burner rifles, they're modified by a good friend of mine, and are only a molten lump of unidentifiable slag when the police come by to see what's happened.

I could already hear sirens in the distance as I reached the ground floor. Granted, you can always hear sirens in the distance when you're in the city, but I had a feeling that these ones were meant for me. I checked my watch and winced as I realized that I was running a little shorter on time than I had realized; I taken a lot more time to watch my target than I had originally budgeted for.

I still had more than enough time though, I'd planned for all sorts of unexpected things to happen and even with me dragging my feet on the assassination I made it to my cache of supplies with eight minutes to spare.

The cache was hidden in the midst of a pile of junk that the builders had piled up before vacating their half completed monstrosity and heading instead to the courtroom where they were promptly taken for everything that they had.

There was a sleeping bag, which I had slept in the night before, a disguise, a waterproof bag filled with useful things, a rubber wetsuit, and a hole that I had carved up from the sewers over the past several weeks, using equipment that I bought from some sketchy Chinese company using a disposable card and a false name.

The noise of my entry had been nicely masked by the general hubbub of the city contractors sealing off the building from the outside, and I had been very comfortable, as well as completely hidden.

Sliding on my disguise, I put the wetsuit on over it. It had the city's waste management services emblem on the front and I hoped that it would be convincing enough if I ran into any real workers during my escape. I didn't think I would, I'd been careful to choose an out of the way route.

I put on my ventilator, made sure that the glass wasn't fogged, and lowered my bag down into the hole before following it. The darkness of the sewer was suffocating and I turned on the headlight that I'd mounted to my ventilator, the beam revealing stained concrete walls and a little chalk arrow pointing to the south that I had drawn before coming up.

Picking up my bag, I rubbed the chalk arrow of of the wall and proceeded south at a rapid pace, my footsteps echoing off of the walls, my heart racing as I checked my watch. Two minutes. I turned a corner, checked my watch again, and then flattened myself into a little hollow where a light had once been, putting in earplugs as I did so. The bulb in the alcove had long since burnt out, but nobody had bothered to replace it.

I counted the last few seconds down on my watch and then, perfectly on time, the ground shook beneath my feet and I heard a roar echo down the tunnel, its sound multiplying and reverberating into itself, shaking me to my very core. Dust billowed down the tunnel, having gusted into the hole that I had made, and I wondered if I should check to see if that portion of the tunnel had collapsed before deciding that escape was more important. Adjusting my headlamp, I continued jogging down the tunnel, bag bouncing on my shoulders, giddy excitement bubbling up within me as the last few scattered echoes of the controlled implosion of the building that I had shot my target from faded into silence.

I had planned this for nearly four months, had maneuvered all of the moving parts of the plan into place, using all of my cunning and ingenuity to do so, and somehow, though I expected things to go wrong at every step, my plan had worked perfectly. I checked my watch, winced as I realized that I was going to be later than I thought, and then sent another text, this one to a different number, letting them know that I was taking the subway and would meet them soon. This of course was code, soft, inoffensive words designed to evade the governmental software searching texts, emails and all other forms of digital communication for signs of terrorism, crime and whatever else that the men in suits wanted to stamp out.

My phone buzzed a moment later, a screenshot of a 10:00 P.M. dinner reservation for a very exclusive restaurant only a few blocks from where I was at the moment. I indicated that I understood, then put my phone away. I had a fairly long trek to make before I would come to the outlet that I was planning on exiting from, and even then my journey wasn't entirely over. I still had lunch after this, and then dinner. My day was becoming so very busy.

I reached the outlet after only a few instances of going in circles, unlocked it with a skeleton key and made my way out to the slick grey rocks below, stepping gingerly until I made it to the sand. The outlet was fairly close to a beach and I stripped off my wetsuit and ventilator just before I arrived on the beach, leaving me in a short sleeved shirt with some random corporate brand on the front, and swim trunks. Now I looked more or less like everyone else on the beach, just another guy walking around the sand with a beach bag.

The weather was mild and there weren't too many people out and about, though I did notice a police cruiser parked up by the top of the sand as I put on a pair of sunglasses, and swished my tail, trying to look like I was having a fun time. As I drew closer I realized that the cop behind the wheel, an older bear with crooked steel rimmed glasses hanging off of his snout, was dozing. I smiled to myself and then made my way across the beach's parking lot and caught a cab.

The cabbie was a jerboa with a picture of him by the Great Pyramids hanging from his rearview mirror and we exchanged small talk as he drove me to my street.

"Did you see that they demolished the Harmon Building over on Eighty Second?" He asked, and I shook my head.

"No. Did you see it?" I made sure to inject curiosity into my voice.

"No, I was driving someone over on the other side of town." I nodded sympathetically.

"Too bad." The driver let me out in front of my building and I gave him a generous tip before walking briskly inside, leaving my sunglasses on. After the darkness of the sewers the glare of the city still feels unnaturally bright. As I get into the elevator I check my phone.

Don't worry, I'm patient. A certain someone has responded to my apology about being late. I told him that I was at work and I suppose that that's not entirely inaccurate. Looking at myself in the elevator's mirror I wince and decide to take a shower, my fur is spiky and tangled from being trapped in the wetsuit, and the fur on the top of my head is dusted with white and grey particles, probably from the dust that blew into me down in the sewers. I doubt that anyone would be impressed if I showed up to lunch like this.

I'll be there in twenty. You have my full permission to leave if you don't want to wait. The elevator dings and the doors slide open, delivering me to my floor. I unlock my door with an electronic key and walk inside, dumping out the contents of my bag and going through them. The wetsuit goes into the trash, along with the ventilator. I return the key to the sewer outlet to my keyring, the little label on it informing the user that it is for a P.O. Box somewhere in the city. I return the sleeping bag to my closet, then strip off my swim shorts and shirt, tossing them into the laundry.

The final object in the bag, a silenced Walther P99AS, goes into the first drawer of my desk in the next room. I lock that room with my electronic key and return to the front room, where the screen of my phone is displaying a new message.

I might just run off with the maître d if you take too long ;)_ _ I chuckle at that, send back a smiley emoticon and set the phone back down, heading into the bathroom.

The lights in the bathroom are brighter than the rest of my apartment, which I've been meaning to fix for a while but haven't gotten around to it. It certainly makes late night visits uncomfortable. I turn on the shower and listen to the hiss of the water as I think of tonight's dinner with the people who asked me to do today's hit.

The good news is that it's in a public place so they probably wont try to kill me. The bad news is that it's in a public place and I might be seen by people who I don't want to see me. But that's unavoidable, dinners like this are mandatory and beyond rude to skip out on.

I wash quickly, lathering my fur with shampoo and cleaning out as much grime as I can. Drying myself off with a fur dryer, I pat a little cologne on, tug on a blue dress shirt and passably matching pants, tuck a Beretta 418 into the back of those pants and get back in the elevator.

I feel underarmed with only the Beretta to protect me, but decide that I'm probably fine, after all, today is going well, what could go wrong now? It's a remarkably overconfident attitude but instead of feeling nervous about the possibility of taking a bullet, my only apprehension surrounds meeting a certain special someone.

The restaurant is down the block from my building and I wonder if I look too disheveled as I walk in, briefly scan the menu and make a decision as to what to get. The maître d, a coal black cat with a severe and suitably chic haircut, smiles at me as I walk up.

"Welcome to the Cafe Normandy, how may I help you?" The cat has a faint French accent and I wonder briefly if the restaurant hires based upon that alone before smiling back.

"I'm meeting somebody here; a snow leopard." The maître d nods instantaneously, beckoning for me to follow.

"Right this way sir." We walk briskly through the restaurant and into a back room, gently lit with diffused lighting that make the richly colored walls look like an oil painting. I catch sight of a spotted and fluffy tail first, the end twitching. I've been around felines enough to know that that means that they're impatient, and I start to think of apologies for my lateness. They're not going to be especially genuine, after all I really did have a tight work schedule today, but still better than nothing.

"Hey Russ," I say with a gentle smile as I take my seat. For a moment I let my eyes drift over the face of the leopard sitting opposite me. Blue eyes with long lashes, silver fur with black markings, long whiskers turned upwards by a smile that I didn't expect to see.

"Jack." Russ says, sitting up in his chair, eyes suddenly alert and happy. "You're here." I nod and scoot myself in, the maître d hovering patiently nearby, waiting to take our orders.

"I am so sorry about the delay, work was a nightmare today." I can see from Russ' watch that it's nearly two and kick myself for taking too long in the shower, it's been more like a half hour past the point when I told him that it'd take me another twenty minutes to arrive at the restaurant. Russ nods, looking me over.

"Yeah, you look tired. Your fur is all clumpy, I guess you've been running around a lot." I chuckle, smoothing down a patch of unruly fur between my ears.

"I had to go chase down a few files that got mixed up by the Vice President of the company. No big deal though, I got them tracked down just in the nick of time." I'm about to ask how Russ is when the maître d cuts neatly between us, handing me a menu.

"Would you like to hear our specials today?" He asks, but I shake my head.

"I'll have the roast duck cutlets with wine sauce please. And I'm fine with water for a drink, thanks." Russ orders an appetizer and I can see crumbs on the tablecloth near his plate, evidently he filled up on bread. I don't blame him, I did leave him waiting for nearly an hour.

"Again, I'd like to apologize for nearly standing you up," I say, but Russ just smiles.

"You did show up though, that's more than some guys do." I nod, trying not to be suspicious of Russ's kindness towards me. This is one of the only parts of my life where I can try and not think about my work, but even then the old instincts still flare up with monotonous regularity. There's always the chance, however slim, that the snow leopard sitting before me is another assassin, hired to get close to me and then take me out.

"And you waited for me," I tuck my napkin into my lap, "which is more than a lot of guys do, or really need to do. I admire your patience." My words might be cheap coming from someone who just spent thirty hours in a building wired with several tons of explosives, waiting for a single individual to come walking down a crowded street. But for a civilian, waiting an hour in a restaurant is plenty impressive. Standards these days...so low.

"I think you're interesting," Russ says, curling his tail around his seat, "so waiting for you just might be worth it." He says this slightly teasingly, a smile tracing his features. We've talked a lot via text and shared various aspects of our lives, mine fake, his probably real, but this is our first time actually seeing one another in the flesh

"I'd hope so. But anyways, how was your day?" It's a benign, almost worthless question but I'm curious, and sort of eager to move away from the subject of my lateness.

"This is my day off so I decided to go around the city. I was planning on going to see the Harmon Building get demolished but a man got shot in the street that my cab was going down, someone in a car panicked and there was a pileup." I frown, I didn't see a pileup, but then again I was quite a ways away, it would have been an easy thing to miss.

"That's awful," I say sympathetically, "I hope you made it out of there alright." Russ nods.

"I was fine, my cab driver reversed out of there but there was enough confusion that I missed the demolition. I still don't know what happened to the guy who got shot." I nod, marveling at how small the world has become these days.

"I didn't hear anything about that...the shooting I mean. I'm sorry that that happened to you." There's a brief moment of silence, and I wonder what to say next when Russ speaks.

"The Vice President who messed up the files, did he give you any trouble today?" I mentally run through the details of the false life that I've constructed. If anyone were to ask Russ about me then he would say that I was a junior executive at one of the monolithic health insurance companies who help run the ACA, that my boss (the Vice President) was an incompetent who was only there because his father was located even higher up the power chain, and that I had a somewhat strange work schedule.

"Not much, he left for lunch at eleven and left us to do damage control. He's lucky that we got everything fixed up, he might have gotten more than a slap on the wrist had it gotten any worse." Russ frowned.

"I'm glad that I don't work with anyone like that." Russ says. He works at a graphic design studio somewhere across the city and though he makes only a fraction of what I've said that I make (my real pay is higher, though the bonuses that executives get are considerably better than anything I could hope to get my paws on) he seems much happier with his work.

I even checked the company's website to make sure that he was who he said he was, and while the website confirmed that he had indeed worked for the company for the past three years, it didn't erase my suspicions. I suspect that they're permanent at this point.

"I'm sort of jealous of your work environment," I say, making sure that I sound wistful, "I'm too attached to my salary though." Russ shrugs.

"Money isn't everything. I've been reading Siddhartha lately, it's very good. Have you read it?" I nod. I bought a copy of it in a bookstore in Bangkok shortly before being shot at by a group of angry Thai gangsters. I didn't get a chance to read it until after those gangsters were dismembered and buried beneath a layer of concrete in the basement of a safe house that I've never been back to, but I read it all the same. My favorite part was when Siddhartha became a businessman and learned how to be a lover, and while I know I'm deliberately missing the point of the entire book, I still don't like that Siddhartha gives up his power in favor of poverty in the end, it just seems needless.

"Yes, I read the entire thing twice in a row when I was on a long flight. It's quite the read." Russ swishes his tail and nods.

"I'm not quite finished yet. He's learning how to do business and make love right now," he makes brief eye contact with me as he mentions the second skill, then looks hurriedly away, "and I'm not sure why he's doing that. Shouldn't he have stayed with the Samanas?" I shrug.

"The Buddha did tell him to follow his heart, and his heart pointed him towards the city. He wasn't satisfied with being a Samana anymore, he'd already learned everything he could learn from them." I'm slightly surprised to be having a literature discussion, but it's pleasant to just talk to somebody and not have to discuss business, death or any of those old, monotonous subjects.

"That's true..." Our food comes, my duck cutlets and Russ' lobster bisque appetizer. For a few moments we eat in silence, I debate whether it's a wise move or not to invite Russ up to my apartment, then decide to go with it. Today has been a good day after all, what could go wrong?

"You know," I say, "I have my copy up in my apartment if you'd like to finish reading it." Russ blinks and then smiles.

"Is that an invitation?" He asks playfully.

"Absolutely." There's a brief moment of hesitation, then Russ nods. We finish our food slowly, still talking, but the tone of the conversation has changed, becoming tempered by a strange sort of anticipation. The maître d stops by again and hands off the check, which I promptly pay before Russ can so much as reach for his wallet.

"Please, I left you waiting for all that time, I can pay." Russ agrees, somewhat reluctantly, and I pay in crisp twenties, which I always have a large supply of at any given moment. Even my swim shorts have a hidden waterproof pocket with two thousand dollars in it. Just in case.

"Thank you for visiting," the maître d tells us with a smile, "have a nice day." I swear that he winks at me as we leave, and I smile to myself, the cat knows exactly what's up.

"My building is just up the block from here." I say, pointing to the tinted glass front that looms above us. Russ cranes his neck, staring up at the very top, where the penthouse is. I thought about buying it when I first moved in, I could certainly afford to do so, but ended up going for one of the larger apartments near the top instead, the penthouse is simply too flashy, and my apartment is more defensible.

"Wow." Russ says, honest admiration coloring his voice, "no wonder you chose the Cafe Normandy." He elbows me gently in the ribs and I laugh.

"It's also a lovely restaurant," I say. Russ is absolutely right, I chose the Normandy almost entirely because it's right next to my building and I knew that I would have to clean off after my job. I also eat there every now and then, paying only in cash, coming infrequently enough that the maître d wouldn't be able to look up my name very easily in the ledger. I do this everywhere I go, and it's almost infinitely sustainable. I read somewhere once that a person could eat at a different restaurant in the city for every single meal for thirty nine years. It's even longer if you include bars and taverns.

We walk through the front and I say hello to the doorman, who welcomes me back and glances at Russ before going back to whatever he's doing on his tablet. I press the button for the twenty-seventh floor for the second time that day, and sneak a look at Russ through the corner of my eyes. He looks slightly nervous, perhaps this is the first time he's been invited to someone else's apartment, maybe he's wondering if it's too soon to be saying yes to things like this. I'm not bothered by this, I have plenty of time to figure him out before I have to leave for dinner.

"You were at the part where Siddhartha had just arrived in the city, right?" I ask as the doors slide open and I show Russ to the door of my apartment. My door might look like typical oak, but that's just the first half inch or so, after that it's hardened steel. I also have more locks beyond the electronic one, which I can activate through my phone or a remote within my apartment.

I unlock my door and let it swing open, Russ following me inside, his eyes sliding across every aspect of my apartment.

I'm a firm believer in modernism and it shows, almost everything in my apartment is constructed with right angles and hard edges, except the furniture, which is soft and comfortable. I have a bay window, tinted from the outside but clear from the inside, that offers a view of the city, and normally I don't have to turn on any lights in my living room and kitchen, the sun does all my work for me.

The kitchen is set into the back of the room but I don't use it very often, it's more for show than anything. My refrigerator is more likely to be full of mineral water and the occasional bottle of wine than cheese, eggs and butter.

"I think it's on my bookshelf over here," I say, pointing to a steel framed bookshelf set next to the window. It's filled with books but I've only ever read half of them, the rest I know the plot points of well enough to discuss them with people but haven't so much as flipped through the pages. Russ walks over and I watch him as he walks, his tail swishing behind him, his fur illuminated by sunlight as he passes in front of the bay window. I think he looks quite beautiful in that moment.

"It's right here," Russ says, withdrawing my copy from the shelf, "you were right." I watch as he looks over my copy, and the Bangkok International Airport sticker that I had put on the inside of the cover, to commemorate the city where I had bought it.

"I bought it in Thailand," I explain, "while I was on vacation a few years back. I spent most of the flight back to the States reading and rereading it, trying to get at the messages within." Mostly I had tried figuring out why Siddhartha hadn't just retired quietly to the countryside with his wealth when he had the chance to, but I didn't mention that.

"How is Thailand?" Russ asks and I sit down on my couch, relaxing against the firm cushions.

"Thailand is a beautiful country," I say, quite truthfully, "the water is very blue and they have thousands of little coastal islands dotting the sea like emeralds. Bangkok is also interesting, it's a very..." I think of my run in with the gangsters I had been hired to deal with and how they had very nearly gotten the drop on me in the bookstore, "turbulent city, you have to be careful where you go sometimes but I'd highly recommend it." Russ smiles and takes a seat besides me, not quite close enough that we touch, but close nonetheless.

"That sounds wonderful. I'd love to travel the world someday." He says wistfully, his eyes suddenly distant.

"Do you have family overseas?" I ask, and Russ nods.

"Yeah, they're living in Kathmandu and I've been meaning to visit them for a while but I just don't have the money right now." I nod vaguely, thinking of my own overseas relations; so distant that I might as well not even know them. They mostly live in small, sandy and unstable countries in the less fortunate portions of the world, exactly what my side of the family came here to escape.

"Don't worry," I put a reassuring paw on Russ's shoulder, "you'll see them someday, and they'll be very glad to see you." Russ' smile is genuine and brilliant as he looks over to me.

"Thanks. That means a lot." For a long time we lock eyes, only a few inches from each other, then Russ looks quickly away, almost definitely blushing through his fur.

"Uh...how about we start Siddhartha?" He asks, and I nod in agreement. There'll be other chances, I tell myself as Russ flips through the pages to find where he left off. We start to read, and all at once we're both very quiet.