FSE

Furry search engine

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“Ma’am, if you would please-*”

“Now you listen to me… what did you say your name was again?”

“Shawn, ma’am.”

“Shawn. I’ve been on the phone for close to an hour at this point, I’ve spoken to three different people, and I’ve had it up to here with all the excuses. Either you restore the recording of my daughter’s basketball game or you can cancel my subscription!”

The gray squirrel grimaced, rubbing his temples with one paw. “As each of us has told you, Mrs. Dumas, that recording was deleted - by someone in your household, I should add - two days ago. The restoration window is only 24 hours. There is nothing anyone can do to-*”

“GET ME YOUR SUPERVISOR. NOW!”

“With pleasure, ma’am.” He managed to put the call on hold with his right paw a fraction of a second before his left fist slammed down onto his desk, startling the other call center agents near him. Even with that minor catharsis, he found he couldn’t stand up immediately; his slender frame was shaking in the seat, and his tail lashed wildly behind him, as if instinctively trying to mislead a pursuing predator. Unfortunately, in this environment, it had the opposite effect, making it eminently obvious who had made the noise, and he yelped aloud when he felt a paw close on his shoulder. Heart pounding, he looked up to see the marten who had just been chastising him over his metrics an hour earlier.

“Everything alright, Mr. Farrell?”

Shawn swallowed hard and squeezed his wet eyes shut for a moment, getting himself under control. “It’s a supcall. She’s upset over a deleted recording.”

“I see. Well, send it to my desk.” The marten glanced at his watch. “Your break is in fifteen minutes, right? Go ahead and take it now.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Dropping his headset onto his desk with shaky paws, he wobbled to his feet and shuffled toward the exit, his tail still betraying his fight-or-flight response to the verbal attack. Certainly, he wasn’t the only person in that building who didn’t want to be there… but for every sympathetic look he got from a co-worker, there was a pair of rolled eyes or an annoyed stare from another. He’d been there a year already, but for him, it never got easier, and he had yet to work out how so many of the others seemed unaffected by the abuse. He lit a cigarette in the smoking area - a habit he would’ve sworn he’d never pick up, prior to getting this job - and exhaled with a sigh. “Maybe they just don’t have souls,” he murmured to himself.

“The customers, or the suits?”

Shawn jumped, turning to look at the source of the unexpected response, and then immediately looked away from the black wolf’s grinning face, getting flustered in an entirely different way. Shane reminded him entirely too much of his ex-boyfriend, and those were feelings he didn’t need when he was already tied up in knots.

“Can’t it be both?”

“Oh, it definitely is. Well, hang in there.” The wolf put out his own cigarette and squared his far more solid shoulders. “Once more unto the bitch!”

“Don’t you mean breach?”

“Like I said, it can definitely be both. Seeya, treerat!” The wolf waved lazily over his shoulder as he headed back into the building, and Shawn tried unsuccessfully not to admire him from behind. Just then, the squirrel’s phone vibrated in his pocket, and he pulled it out to find an email notification for ‘Screening Results’, causing him to squint in confusion. He’d had some blood work done a few weeks prior, but he’d already seen the results. Why…? And then it hit him.

His blood wasn’t the only thing they’d been running tests on.

It was… about four years ago, now, that the reproductive pandemic known colloquially as the Empty Nest Plague had plunged most of mammalian society into chaos. Formally titled MRV-1, the virus was incredibly communicable, but it had no outwardly obvious symptoms; by the time its existence was discovered by the medical establishment, it had already done its terrible work. Women everywhere were largely unharmed. While they could be (and almost universally were) carriers for the virus, only one in a thousand suffered any effects from infection. For men, however, those numbers were reversed; only one in a thousand was spared.

The other 99.9% of the men on the planet had been rendered irrevocably infertile.

Obviously, this created a potentially extinction-level crisis. Birth rates dropped to almost nil within a year. It was predicted that, within a decade, the damage to population numbers would start causing a serious disruption to society; within three, total collapse would become inevitable. Governments everywhere scrambled to find a solution, but in the end, they all came up with the same inevitable answer: those who could still breed, needed to, and as much as possible, to mitigate the decline. There were reports that, in some countries, any male still found to be fertile became an immediate ward of the state, to be ‘used’ for the good of mammalkind - and the stories of what that looked like were both titillating and terrifying. Fortunately, mammal rights had prevailed in Shawn’s country, but even so, the government had had to establish…

The squirrel shook his head. It had no bearing on him anyway. Women had always seemed alien and unapproachable to him regardless. It wasn’t that he was… completely gay. The idea of breeding tugged at his deepest urges just the same as it did for most guys. But he’d never had any romantic inclination toward the ‘fairer’ sex, and had wound up under his ex more often than not anyway while they’d still been together - which had been just fine with him. He sighed… these fertility tests were now government-mandated for every male over the age of 18, and that was what had cost him that relationship.

Even though it was nearly a foregone conclusion that any given man would get the ‘we regret to inform you’ email, Connor had been inexplicably devastated when he received his. Shawn had never really understood it - it had absolutely no bearing on a same-sex relationship anyway - but learning that he couldn’t sire pups had ‘unmanned’ his lupine boyfriend on some primordial level, and within a couple of weeks the wolf had broken things off and stopped even responding to Shawn’s texts. After that, the squirrel had a bad taste in his mouth about even getting tested himself, but that was one point upon which the new laws were inflexible, and so when he’d gone to get checked up and get his anxiety meds refilled, he had dutifully jacked off into the cup and promptly forgot all about it. It was a bit odd, though… everyone else he knew who’d gone through the test had gotten their results in two or three days.

Well, just as at the doctor’s office, best to get it over with and move on. He glanced at the clock on his phone, took another drag, and tapped a claw on the email notification.

Screening Results

Sperm Count: ~185M/ml

Motility: High

MRV-1 Antibody Production: High

MRV-1 Infection: Negative

We are pleased to inform you…

Shawn stared in disbelief. It was him. He - Shawn Farrell, the 19-year old fidgety gay nerd of a squirrel - was the one in a thousand who had natural immunity to the Empty Nest Plague.

Head still reeling, he scanned the rest of the email quickly, and the reason for the delay became apparent. While the government here did not compel anyone to take part in the repopulation program, they were apparently notified of all positive results, and attached what one could loosely call an offer of employment to them before they were sent on to the patient. A one-year minimum contract, living on-site at the national breeding facility known as the Cradle, with an option to renew yada yada yada… Shawn glanced at the clock again. There was a ton of fine print, but he was almost out of time. He discarded his cigarette and shook himself out. It was crazy, anyway. A gay teenager signing himself up to fuck women for a living? It was a cruel irony that he was one of the ‘lucky few.’ The reality was, his job was waiting for him, and while it was a hellscape for a relatively sensitive guy like him, it was stable. And didn’t involve him whoring himself out for money.

He trudged his way back into the call center, reading more of the email out of a sort of morbid curiosity, glancing up occasionally to make sure he didn’t run into anyone. The fine print made it clear that participants could be required to… copulate… with women of any age or species, although it went on at length with reassurances about personal preferences being honored as much as possible. That actually got a chuckle out of him; he rather doubted that his preference for other men’s asses and mouths, when he even topped at all, would go over well with those running such a program. Free accommodations… a rather exorbitant list of amenities provided gratis… and of course, the actual financial compensation, which was almost double what he made in a year here. He glanced up to see his supervisor standing at his desk, then froze and looked back down at his phone. There… yes, there had in fact been one more zero on that salary than he had realized at first.

The marten cleared his throat. “Mr. Farrell, you should know that Mrs. Dumas had some troubling things to tell me about your conduct on that call. I need you back on the phones right now, but be aware we’ll be discussing your future with the company tomorrow.”

Shawn just stood there, his eyes sliding between his desk and his supervisor and truly seeing neither. Instead, he beheld with sudden clarity the two doors open to him… and realized that the devil you know really doesn’t have anything over even a chance to escape from a living hell. He found his paws carrying him the rest of the way over to his desk, observed from an oddly detached outer perspective. “Actually, sir…” He disconnected his headset, wrapped up the cord, and shoved it against the front of the marten’s suit. “...I have just decided that we will not.”

“Mr. Farrell? What are you-*”

“Oh, excuse me, I’m using my Customer Service Voice. Sorry, force of habit, you understand.” Shawn felt a giddy madness steal over him as a bucktoothed smile spread across his muzzle. “What I meant to say is that you can shove my headset up your ass, because I won’t be needing it anymore.” Without another word, he pivoted on one footpaw and turned to go… but stole one glance backward, past his newly severed (and flabbergasted) manager, at the sound of a barked laugh, and saw Shane in the next row of cubicles past his own flashing him a huge, fangy grin and a thumbs up. Just as the wolf had done a few minutes prior, Shawn gave a casual wave of farewell over his shoulder as he walked out of the call center for the last time, and into the unknown.

---

“Now boarding, Flight 357 to New Dawn. Now boarding, Flight 357 to New Dawn. Passengers, please have your boarding passes ready.”

The week following Shawn’s abrupt resignation had gone by like a whirlwind. Naturally, he hadn’t even made it back to his apartment before he’d started falling apart. What had he been thinking? He had never been the impulsive sort before, and he’d just thrown away steady employment on the promise of a new life doing… well, doing women, and by job lots at that. He’d had himself a good cry as soon as he got in the door, but as soon as he’d gotten it out of his system, he’d gone straight to work, calling the Cradle’s enrollment line and getting himself registered in under half an hour. It was a strange feeling; he’d gone suddenly to the other side of the customer service transaction, but in the end he was still the asset, not the customer. At least it inspired him to be considerate to the woman on the other end of the line, who for her part seemed sympathetic to his uncertainty and was ready with (mostly) reassuring answers to his questions. He’d confirmed the figure that he’d been quoted in the email; owing to the absolute necessity of both volume and genetic diversity in breeders (a term she was able to drop without a hint of discomfort, he’d noted), compensation was generous across the board. Apparently his was still higher than most, owing to his high fertility rating and the fact (which he had not even suspected previously) that gray squirrels were in surprisingly low numbers in the program, making him a particularly hot commodity. He’d had the flight info in his email at the end of the call. The rest of the week was spent getting his things moved to storage and putting his local affairs in order before his sudden departure.

“Those needing additional assistance to board, please come to the desk at this time.”

Shawn looked around at the crowd gathered at the gate. No one seemed to be approaching the attendants yet, so he remained in his seat, his single piece of carry-on luggage sitting at his feet. It felt surreal to him, traveling somewhere he’d never been with only a vague understanding of what was waiting for him at the other end… and with only one change of clothes packed! He had been assured that all his needs would be attended to once he arrived at the facility, and had in fact been admonished against bringing unnecessary clothing. There had been something about a dress code for program participants. His laptop and a portable gaming system were coming with him, but he felt a pang of loss for his gaming desktop, now gathering dust in storage for however long he remained a… a breeder. God, that term still made him quail. Surely he was making a terrible mistake.

“Those seated in first class, please feel free to board at any time. Now boarding rows one through ten. Rows one through ten, please come to the gate, and please have your boarding passes ready.”

Paralysis gripped him for a moment. This was it. He could still turn around, walk away, and… no. No, he’d burned bridges behind him; he had to see this through. Shawn forced himself to his feet, slouching in his black hoodie, and shuffled into the rapidly-forming line. It struck him again that the large majority of people waiting at the gate were women… but the people queueing up at this early stage were closer to an even split.

The line moved quickly enough, although the rapid metronome of Shawn’s heart made it seem to take an eternity. Gripped by paranoia as he was, some part of his brain mused that they might turn him away at the gate. Certainly, he didn’t look like the sort of person you’d normally see flying first class, but apparently that was just the first of the many perks he could expect after agreeing to help make sure his species didn’t vanish from the face of the planet. Still, he breezed through with no complications, unless one counted the knowing look the vixen attendant gave him as she checked his pass. He remained dazed enough that he barely remembered to pull the book out of his luggage before stowing it overhead, and then sank into his surprisingly large and comfortable window seat, head tucked down and breathing rapidly. A sardonic voice in his head had several things to say about how he was reacting to luxury as though he was under attack, but he shoved it aside, pulling his hugely fluffy tail into his lap and combing through it with his claws in a nervous habit he’d had since he was a kit. A few moments later, a shadow fell over him as someone reached into the overhead compartment… and then a large, broad-shouldered Friesian stallion who looked to be nearing 40 lowered himself into the seat next to Shawn’s, his frame enough to dwarf the squirrel’s even if the latter wasn’t hunkered up in anxiety. The horse tossed his mane a bit as he settled in, then gave his neighbor a calculating once over, followed by a grin. “You look like you’re about to have a heart attack, kid. Loosen up. You a new breeder?” His deep voice seemed unnaturally loud to Shawn’s ears, and the squirrel tried unsuccessfully to retreat further into his cushioned seat, feeling a dozen eyes turn his way.

“Um… y-yes, something like that.” He could feel his ears burning. “How did you…?”

“How’d I know? Hah, what else would you be doing up here in Fancyland, looking like a lost puppy? There ain’t that many reasons folks head to the Cradle, and you don’t look like a g-man, a corporate exec, or a staffer.” The horse reached over with one black-coated hand, with dark feathering at the wrist and fingertips sheathed in hoof-like keratin. “Name’s Jet.”

“Sh-shawn.” The squirrel’s paw almost vanished into the stallion’s hand as he shook it. “But how did you know I was headed for the Cradle?”

Jet looked confused for a moment. “Because… that’s where the plane’s going? Why else would you be on it?”

Shawn’s brow furrowed. “Well, there’s got to be other reasons why people visit New Dawn, right?”

The stallion’s eyebrows shot up, and he nickered in amusement. “Oh man, you are fresh seed. The Cradle is New Dawn.”

Shawn’s eyes widened. “It’s… the entire city?!”

“The whole damn thing, boyo.” Jet settled back into his seat with a satisfied smile. “Which means…” He trailed off, and made a show of looking around the cabin.

“M-means what, sir?”

The stallion finally, mercifully, lowered his voice to a conspiratorial murmur as he leaned in closely. “If it’s on this plane, has tits, and doesn’t look like one of those three things I said a minute ago, you could have your dick in it day after tomorrow.”

The reality of the situation hit Shawn like a truck, and he felt his blush spread from his ears down under the gray fur of his face. Jet was right. Well, mostly. Presumably staff had their families with them too, but statistically speaking, at least three quarters of the women on the flight were coming to the Cradle to… to be… serviced. To have a man they’d never met before, and never would again, deliberately impregnate them. The squirrel lowered his face into his paws. “Oh my god.”

Jet laughed, settling back in his chair. “Yeah, you get it now. It’s a whole different world in there, I tell you what. Hits you with culture shock comin’ and goin’. Which is why I’m heading back in.”

It took Shawn several moments to acclimate enough to his new awareness of his fellow passengers to retrieve his face from his paws and look back over at the muscled stallion next to him. He felt his loins stir a bit; Jet was about old enough to be his father, but that body made him think things, regardless, especially knowing what he knew now. “So this isn’t your first time?”

“Nnnnope. I was in for a year already. Got to missing folks back home, so I checked out when my time was up, but…” The jovial tone faded from the stallion’s voice. “You really can’t go home again.”

Anxiety rose in the squirrel’s chest again. “What? Why? What do you mean?”

Jet gave Shawn a somber look. “‘Cause a year from now, you won’t be the same guy who left.”

Before the squirrel could reply, the intercom chimed to life.

“Welcome aboard Freedom Airways flight 357, with nonstop service to New Dawn…”

The standard preflight rigamarole gave both of them adequate excuse to end what was becoming an uncomfortable conversation, and Shawn opened up the novel he’d brought for the flight, but after trying and failing to read the first page for five minutes straight he closed it, and his eyes, with a sigh. It was all too much, and he still hadn’t had enough time to even process being really, truly done with his awful job, let alone the enormity of what he’d signed himself up for. Takeoff was enough to take his mind off of it for at least a few minutes, but once they hit cruising altitude, he was once again alone with his swirling thoughts.

“Hey, Jet?”

The stallion roused himself from his own reverie. “Yeah?”

“What’s it like in there?”

The horse shook his dark head slowly. “It ain’t like anything you’ve seen before, kiddo. I wouldn’t even know where to start. You’ll be finding out for yourself soon enough. Bottom line though, breeders like us are treated like kings, and you get more pussy in one month than most guys get in their entire lives. Plus, they have treatments to make sure you can keep up with the demand, if you catch my drift. If you like fuckin’, it’s basically heaven on a silver platter.”

Shawn stared at the seat in front of him, his unspoken secret trying to claw its way up through his throat. When it finally pried its way out, it sounded almost like a whispered sob. “But I’m gay.”

Jet’s head whipped around at that, his eyes widening. “You’re… fuck me sideways boy, why would you sign up for this job if you’re gay?” The squirrel recoiled into his seat, eyes clamping shut, and the stallion let out a nickering sigh. “Look. Ain’t for me to tell you what’s right for you. I’m sure you have your reasons. But if you ain’t into pussy, this is gonna be one long year for you.” He scratched behind one ear, frowning a bit. “Reckon I’ve heard of a couple other gayboys in the program before. You can be kind of a live-in sperm donor. Cradle’s got machines for that the rest of the world ain’t even dreamed of yet. But that don’t do near as much good for the program as a stud ready ‘n eager to empty his nuts into a needy mare. So don’t go thinkin’ you’ll make bank like the rest of us if you go that way. Those quotes they give you when you sign up, they’re an estimate based on what they think they can get outta you. I came away with more; some folks get cold feet and don’t make half as much as they were told. But I tell you this: by a month or two into their contracts, most folks forget about the whole ‘gay’ and ‘straight’ thing. I should know. I reckoned I was straight before I signed up after all, but the way things roll in there, sooner or later they get you horned up enough that any hole can get you off, and that’s the truth.”

Shawn gradually opened his eyes halfway, but kept them cast down at the seat in front of him. “That… isn’t that weird, though? If you’re straight, and you get all the women you can handle, why would you…?”

“Why would you stick your dick in another guy? Hah. Listen, ki-* Shawn. That’s just the thing. The women are there for one thing, and when they get it, they’re gone. Which means, if you wanna have fun with someone for your sake, someone you know as more than the damned data lists your daemon is feeding you, who’s it gonna be? That’s right: another breeder. So, you got that goin’ for you at least. Make a few friends, maybe you’ll find a bi guy to push your buttons and help you do the work. And if that don’t work, well, there’s always the milking machines. Alright?”

Shawn felt himself relaxing a bit. If what he was hearing was true, then at least he wouldn’t be the only non-hetero guy in the entire program. “Alright. Uh, tangent… what’s a daemon?”

Jet chuckled another of his bassy chuckles at that. “Oh, that’s one thing I am not gonna spoil for you. You’ll find out real quick once you get through the intake. But I will put one more thing out there to keep you goin’ til you find your feet.” He leaned in close again, his muzzle almost brushing Shawn’s ear, and this time squeezed the squirrel’s thigh with a single, big hand. “You make yourself a daddy in there - give just one lucky lady the belly bump she’s after, your own self - and I’ll let you find out what a fertile stallion’s cock tastes like, alright?”

Shawn’s fur all poofed up in a wave as a thrill ran up his spine, and he felt himself stiffening rapidly inside his jeans at the thought of going down on that virile Friesian. His voice left him again, despite his best efforts; in the end, it was all he could do to nod frantically to that offer.

“Good boy,” Jet chuckled, giving the squirrel another thrill of excitement. That was what Connor had always called him after he’d taken one of the wolf’s loads. But his boyfriend had been less than a year older than him; hearing it from a mature, powerful stud-horse added an entirely new dimension to the expression, and Shawn definitely found it to his liking.

With thoughts of a massive equine penis making him regret not wearing baggier pants onto his flight, the squirrel settled in to wait out the rest of his flight. He didn’t have to ‘go straight’ in order to make this crazy plan work. He just had to train himself to be able to ejaculate in the wrong kind of hole. It was just a job.

And it would be a hell of a lot better than getting screamed at for a living.

---

Shawn had hoped to get a look at New Dawn from the air, but alas, the plane’s approach vector put paid to that idea, and the airfield looked no different from the pawful of others he’d seen in his nineteen years. The first oddity he encountered was after leaving the terminal. While there were baggage carousels and an exit to a parking garage, they saw very little traffic; nearly everyone boarded a series of trains that served as the main point of egress from the airport and, following the directions in his email, Shawn did the same. Jet stayed with him, making small talk to help defuse what the squirrel assumed was his extremely apparent anxiety. It was the tail; no matter how he tried to slow his breathing and blank his face, it always betrayed what he was feeling.

“Next stop, Gate C: Current and returning breeders.”

Jet flicked an ear at the tram’s soothing, if recorded, voice. “Looks like this is where I get off. Remember what I said, treerat. The program will be good to you if you’re good to it.” He gave the squirrel’s shoulder a firm squeeze before sauntering onto the platform, and as the car started to pull away, Shawn saw the stallion’s face light up as though he recognized someone. The glimpse only lasted a moment, though, as the train passed back into another tunnel, soft white lights flashing by the window in regular streaks. Shawn took a deep breath, staring down at his wheeled luggage as if it had some answers for him and feeling like a clueless sheep wandering into a lion’s den.

“Next stop, Gate D: New breeders.”

The squirrel tensed up. He wasn’t sure he would ever get used to being called a… called that. A voice in the back of his head jibed that at least he was ‘here for the D,’ but his mind’s attempt to deflect with humor fell flat even as he thought it. Paralysis gripped his legs as the tram slowed to a stop; if it wasn’t for the fact that he feared being lost in the system more than facing what was ahead of him, he might not have even been able to get up. It was still not lost on him, as he disembarked, that he was the only one doing so, and a moment later he found himself nearly alone on the platform, surrounded by concrete on all sides and clutching the handle of his luggage as though it might save him.

Well, ‘alone’ was not quite accurate, he amended a moment later. Ahead of him lay another x-ray and metal detection booth, indistinguishable from the one he’d gone through before he boarded his flight, but this one was staffed by a pair of mammals in crisp military uniforms. The ferret at the counter only had a holstered handgun at her hip, but the tiger standing off to the side had what looked like an assault rifle held across his chest as he pointedly did not look at Shawn. The ferret was showing him no such courtesy, however; she tapped a claw on the counter in front of her. “Are you lost?”

“N-no ma’am! At least, I don’t think so…”

“If you’re enrolling, get over here. We aren’t going to shoot you unless you do something stupid.”

Feeling like he was shrinking into himself, Shawn shuffled over to the counter, automatically lifting his luggage onto the conveyor belt… but pausing as the ferret held out a paw. “ID first.” Shawn promptly dropped his wallet in his haste to comply, cursing under his breath as his unexpected, sudden movement of bending over to grab it caused the tiger to tense. He finally fished out his driver’s license and slipped it into the impatient mustelid’s paw, and stood there staring at the floor with wide eyes and hunched shoulders as he heard her tapping at her computer. “Farrell, Shawn R. Alright, you’re expected.” She stopped, cleared her throat. “Look at me.”

Shawn flinched, and had to fight himself for a moment to comply. The ferret glanced between his face and his license before handing it back with a sigh. “I can’t verify your photo if you hide your face. Alright. Anything metal on you?”

“No ma’am, it’s all in the bag.”

“Alright. Go through.”

The squirrel shuffled into the scanner, then waited nervously on the far side as the soldier scrutinized his luggage as though she suspected a hidden bomb. Mustering his courage, he cleared his throat. “Um, I wasn’t expecting the military here…”

“And I wasn’t expecting a post guarding the world’s biggest brothel, but here we are.” Seeing Shawn’s stricken look, her face softened somewhat. “Look. The entire future of the country is riding on the Cradle. If something were to happen here… well, that might be the end of us. Personally, I think it would’ve been a better idea to have a bunch of regional centers, but they don’t pay me to have opinions. The bottom line is, New Dawn is the safest city you’ll ever call home. Anyway, you’re clean.” His luggage rolled out in front of him, and he hastily pulled it down… directly onto his bare footpaw, causing him to yelp. The ferret rolled her eyes. “I’ve let the doctor know you’re here. Just have a seat over there…” As she was saying that, one of the four doors in the back wall opened, and a smiling serval beckoned him in. “...or not. Enjoy your stay, Mr. Farrell.”

Compared to the bare concrete of the receiving platform, the brightly-lit examination room was a welcoming sight, and Shawn breathed a sigh of relief at the feeling of privacy and relative normalcy as the feline doctor closed the door behind him. The irony of finding a doctor’s office comforting was not lost on him, but at least it was a familiar sight. Only two things marred that impression: one, an odd little booth in the back of the room, and two, the doctor’s outfit, a black jumpsuit that buttoned up the left side of the chest with two white, stacked arcs - presumably representing a sunrise - at the right breast.

“Welcome to the Cradle, Mr. Farrell. I’m Dr. Leon Sheridan. May I, perhaps, call you Shawn?” His voice was soft and friendly, and the squirrel felt his anxiety fading to manageable levels.

“Yes p-please, Dr. Sheridan.”

“In that case, it’s Leon to you, as well.” The serval’s genuine smile reached his eyes. “Given the security outside, this always feels ridiculous to ask but… date of birth, please?” He moved behind his computer for a moment as Shawn answered. “Good. Now, you’re in luck; I’m not expecting my next guest for over an hour, so you should feel free to interrupt me and ask questions whenever you like, alright?”

“Okay, s-* Leon. And… thanks.”

The serval clapped his paws together. “Right then. First things first, any symptoms to report? Headache, cough, sneezing, nausea, aches, pains, inexplicable craving for toffee?”

That last part actually got a nervous laugh out of the squirrel. “N-no. Well. Maybe a little headache, but… this is all a bit much, that’s all.”

“Oh I’m sure it is! Frankly, it’s the calm ones who worry me. This is a big change for everyone who comes through my door, and it’s perfectly natural to feel uneasy. But rest assured, everyone here will be taking good care of you, Shawn.” Leon tapped at his computer. “I had your medical records transferred from your PCP. Up to date on all your vaccines, good lad! It says here you don’t drink, but you do smoke?” Shawn nodded nervously; he should’ve known that was coming. The doctor sighed good-naturedly. “Naturally, I’d like to see that last part change. Among all the things I’m sure,” he glanced at his screen again, “Dr. Conway has surely told you on that point, it’s really not good for your sperm count…” He tapped a few keys, and one eyebrow went up. “...although you seem to have gotten away with it so far, my word. Still, that’s a conversation for another day. It says here you’re being treated for chronic anxiety?”

“Yes sir.”

“The medication you’re using… at that dosage, it’s been known to cause erectile dysfunction or difficulty achieving orgasm. Any problems to report on that front?”

Shawn felt his ears burning a bit. “N-no, not really.”

“Then I have no problem continuing with the same treatment. But keep an eye on that. Out there, side effects like that might get waved aside, but in the Cradle, your ability to ejaculate quickly and frequently is a basic job qualification. On which note, let’s have those clothes off, shall we?”

Shawn tensed. “All of them, Doc-* …Leon?”

The serval smiled sympathetically. “We may as well get it over with, Shawn. Breeders are expected to spend nearly all of their time in the altogether, as it were.”

Shawn stared in disbelief. “Wait… I’m expected to be… naked? Even in public? All the time?”

Leon sighed. “I see they’re still mincing words in the intake paperwork. Yes, that’s correct. We need our program participants to be ready to, shall we say, do the deed whenever the moment presents itself, and having everyone involved going about their day au naturale tends to lead to quite a few more such moments. And you needn’t worry about cold weather; I assume you saw the dome on your way in?” Shawn shook his head in bewilderment. “Ah. Regardless, the entirety of New Dawn is climate controlled. So, the only clothing allowed for breeders - and at least most of our recipients - is that which could be said to be ‘less than nothing’ in terms of modesty. And that will be provided to you, should you desire it - and earn the privilege. So! I should like to see you in the fur now, if you please?”

With a gulp, Shawn quickly unzipped and discarded his hoodie. His t-shirt came off a bit more slowly; squirrels were not known for their masculine physiques, and he was if anything on the scrawny side, himself. His fingers paused at the zipper for his jeans. “Not having pockets is going to be kind of a pain…”

“Less so than you would expect! You’ll be given a day bag for carrying things to and fro, should you need it, but you’ll find you have little use for it, I’ll wager. …do stop stalling, Shawn. I am a doctor in the world’s largest breeding facility. I have seen more penises than I could hope to count.”

“Okay, okay!” Biting his lip, he unfastened his jeans, yanked them down and, before he could freeze up again, did the same with his boxers, stepping uncomfortably out of them. Despite Jet’s teasing earlier, his shaft had long since retreated into its sheath, but his balls were on full display… and they were one part of his body that gave him no cause for shame, filling his sack in a very generous pawful.

Being a rodent did have some perks, after all.

“Much better!” The doctor gave him another reassuring smile. “As for your clothes, they’ll be washed and returned to you when you leave the program, or if you have cause to take a leave of absence, such as for a family crisis or the like.” The serval busied himself with the staples of any physical exam, checking Shawn’s eyes, ears, nose, and throat, listening to his heartbeat and breathing, and so forth. “You were screened for STIs one month ago, all negative, but I should ask, how many sexual partners have you had in the past six months?”

“Um, one.”

“And overall?”

“...one.”

“Name?”

“I… is that really any of your business?”

The doctor sighed. “I wish it wasn’t, but you must understand that an outbreak of venereal disease inside the Cradle would be catastrophic. This is considered a matter of national security, so yes, in this case anyone you’ve had relations with in the past six months is our business. You may rest assured that we use this information only for this singular purpose, and it won’t even be saved to your local records.”

Shawn swallowed hard. “Connor Abernathy.”

The doctor missed just a single beat, then nodded, typing it in. “And address, if you have it?”

Hating how invasive this felt, Shawn gave the feline physician his ex-boyfriend’s address. The doctor dutifully typed it in, started a records search, and looked somewhat gravely back at his patient. “Do I correctly understand that you’ve never been with a woman, Shawn?”

“Th-that’s right.” He paused. “And yes, I’m gay. At least, I think I am.” His voice sped up in agitation. “But I don’t have to like girls to be able to… to do my job, right? Like, if I had to, I could just paw off and shove it in at the last second. And I heard there are machines and…” He trailed off, his face burning.

The doctor tilted his head with a noncommittal expression. “Yyyes, and no. Yes, technically you could do as you described - but you would need, shall we say, a wingman to assist you. Masturbating oneself is not allowed in the Cradle. We need our breeders primed to respond strongly to the touch of another body. I won’t burden you with reams of statistics, but rest assured the studies are quite conclusive: breeders’ conception rates are markedly higher with this approach.”

Shawn stared at the doctor in horror. “I can’t jerk off for an entire year?!”

Leon laughed softly. “That’s correct - but again, you’ll find it’s far less of a burden than you expect. If you find yourself in need of relief, there will be no shortage of individuals - of all genders, I should add, not just cis women - who will be happy to provide it to you. Bisexuality is not required of program participants, but it is very much the norm in New Hope. That said, we do expect our breeders to actually breed, so I encourage you to push those boundaries as soon as possible. This very day, if you can.”

Shawn looked away uncomfortably. “Does that mean we’re done?”

Dr. Sheridan coughed and shook his head. “Ah, no. Next is the matter of a minor surgery everyone must undergo at intake.” Shawn’s look of horror returned, and he instinctively clapped his paws over his groin, causing the serval to shake his head rapidly. “No, no! Nothing like that. It’s an implant. Here…” He turned away, lowering his chin, and tapped a claw high on the back of his neck; looking closely, Shawn could just barely see the faintest traces of a healed incision. “It’s what we call a ‘bio-terminal.’ It allows us to monitor your health, along with your responses to stimuli and the like. It also serves as a processing hub for your personal assistant, which we refer to as a ‘daemon.’”

“My responses to… wait, you want to stick a gizmo on my brain stem to read my mind?!” Shawn backed away, suddenly feeling very defenseless without his clothes.

The serval shook his head again. “That’s a common misconception. No, the bio-terminal can’t ‘read your mind’, not in the sense you mean. But it can pick up, in a broader sense, on your reactions to things. It helps the system learn what you like, and what you hate or fear, and it does this to help create situations you find enjoyable.” Leon coughed into a paw. “If I may put that in cruder terms, it learns your kinks and fetishes, and helps create situations where they will be obliged so that you will cum your brains out. Which is, after all, to everyone’s benefit, in here.”

Shawn sat down hard in the chair behind him, his head spinning. The government was installing sex computers on people’s spines to help maintain world population levels?

The doctor was not done. “To head off another concern that is often raised, the bio-terminal cannot ‘mind control’ you in any way. It is not even physically designed to be able to send signals to your nervous system. Global survival crisis or no, such a thing would be both illegal and horrifically immoral, not to mention unsafe with the current sophistication of the technology. It’s basically a high-tech mood ring that can talk to New Dawn’s networks for you, and let us know if you should find yourself in some type of medical crisis.”

His mind still reeling, Shawn rubbed his face with both paws. “I… I need a minute to process this, Dr. Sheridan. And… what was that about a daemon?”

The cat smiled again. “Ah, yes! As I said, your daemon acts as your personal assistant. It’s an AI-driven pseudo-entity. It can remind you of breeding appointments, help you find your way around, answer questions about New Dawn - and pretty much anything available on the internet, for that matter - and keep you company, although you won’t want for that here regardless. It can also help you find partners that share your sexual proclivities, using that data I mentioned earlier. I understand it saves our breeders a lot of awkward moments.”

“But if the bio-terminal can’t send signals, how can it talk to me?”

The doctor’s smile widened. “An excellent question! Once I have the terminal installed, I’ll be putting a pair of micro-speakers in your ears, as well as giving you a pair of special contact lenses to wear. I understand your vision doesn’t require correction?”

“N-no, it’s 20/15.”

“Very good. We have corrective lenses, but you won’t be needing those, then. The speakers allow the daemon to talk to you in a way only you can hear, and the lenses allow the daemon to impose itself on your field of view, again without being perceptible to those around you. The lenses can also display a great deal of information. Both speakers and lenses must be left in for the first 72 hours for calibration, but after that you can remove either at will. We strongly recommend that you do not, though. Once they get used to it, nearly all program participants find that the daemon’s feedback greatly improves their quality of life. And if you must remove the contact lenses, please keep them safe. The speakers are nothing all that special and are generally discarded and replaced at monthly checkups, but the lenses are quite sophisticated. Management gets tetchy if we have to replace them more than once or twice a year.”

“Don’t they get gross if you leave them in all the time?”

Leon chuckled. “Oh come now, Shawn, with all the miracles of modern augmented reality technology I’ve just revealed to you, do you really think self-cleaning contact lenses were the biggest hurdle we had to overcome in development? They cleanse themselves while you sleep. When you wake up and wipe away the sandman’s gifts, you’ve already cleaned them for the day.”

Shawn exhaled slowly. “And if I leave the program? Does the terminal get taken back out?”

“By default, yes… although one can earn the privilege of keeping their terminal, and most who can choose to do so. I don’t mind telling you that I’m shamelessly addicted to my daemon, Curie. She makes my life so very much easier!” The cat seemed to be smiling at an empty space across the room as he spoke, presumably looking at an AI avatar only he could see.

Despite feeling like he was in way over his head, Shawn had to admit that the idea of an AR AI assistant had seriously tickled his considerable technophilia… and besides, it didn’t really sound like he had much of a choice, at this point. “Alright… I guess, let’s get this over with, then?”

“Splendid!” The serval clapped his paws together and pulled a surgical mask into place over his feline muzzle. “If you would just lie down over here…” It was only then that Shawn noticed that the ‘examination table’ was really designed more like a massage table, with a hole and supports for him to lie comfortably face down. He climbed into place, and the doctor pulled out an electric razor, shaving a very small patch on the back of his neck. “Your fur will grow back in no time. Within a couple of weeks, the incision will be next to invisible, like mine.” An alcohol wipe was next, followed by a swab of some cool, gummy substance, which immediately started numbing the area on contact. “Just relax and I’ll have you fixed up in a jiffy. While I work, why not think about the sort of ‘person’ you’d like your daemon to be, hm? Gender, species, voice, apparent age, speaking habits, personality… they’re almost ludicrously customizable. Ah, but, please don’t speak or move while I do this.”

With his face in a soft hammock and aimed at the floor, Shawn couldn’t see what the doctor was doing, but his ears swiveled of their own volition, tracking what activity they could. The elastic snap of nitrile gloves being pulled into place. The soft rip of sterile packages being opened. The tinkle of precise surgical tools against a metal tray. The soft shuffle of the doctor’s jumpsuit as he moved about. It was all somehow rather soothing, despite the squirrel’s tense awareness that he was about to get cut, and he found his mind wandering as the cat had suggested. Perhaps he should make his daemon feminine, to help him get over his awkwardness interacting with women? No, he’d have plenty of exposure there whether he wanted it or not. Better it have a face that would make him comfortable. Something reassuring. Connor’s face flashed through his mind, but he quickly rejected the thought. No, definitely not the lover who’d ghosted him. Shawn felt a gloved paw on his upper back, fingers touching the sides of his neck… the doctor was probably inspecting the site and getting ready. Hmm… still, his relationship had left him with a great fondness for wolves. Maybe…

“Aaand finished!”

Shawn blinked in his hammock. He started to move an arm, then paused uncertainly.

“Oh, please do feel free to sit up. Just try not to bend your neck too much for the next hour or so while the suture’s fresh.”

Shawn carefully lifted his upper body, then twisted his lower, moving to a sitting position on the edge of the table. “That was… quick. I didn’t even think you’d started yet.”

Leon smiled as he removed his mask. “I’ve done hundreds of these, or more. They’re almost as easy for me as giving shots at this point. Now, don’t touch the back of your neck for at least three hours, and try not to get the site wet for at least twelve.” The doctor opened another package, and pulled out a plastic container that looked like an ordinary contact lens container. “With your eagle vision, I’m guessing you don’t have practice putting in contacts. Would you like me to do the honors?”

“Uh, yeah, if you don’t mind.”

“Not in the least!” He opened up both sides of the container. “Okay, now blink a bunch, make sure your eyes are nice and wet for me.” The squirrel obliged, and the serval reached up, holding his right eye open with the help of a thumb. “Aaand a one…” and Shawn blinked hard at having a finger so close to his eyeball, but not before the lens was in place. “...aaand a two.” After the second insertion, he kept his eyes squeezed shut for several seconds; that was more jarring than he’d expected. Still, when he opened them again, he found he couldn’t visually discern any difference with the lenses in, and the alien sensation of having something against his eyes was fading rapidly. “Last up, the audio units. Now, I do warn you,” he continued, as he ripped open another sterile plastic pouch, “these feel a little weird at first. Try not to scratch at your ears, and you’ll stop noticing them in a few hours. Lean to the left for me…” Out of the corner of his eye, Shawn could see a pair of forceps descending toward his right ear, followed by a tickling sensation. “And now to the right.” Moments later, it was done, and the serval clapped his paws again. “And you are now fully equipped to go forth and make babies to your heart’s content. But before you go, we still have a few things to take care of.”

Dr. Sheridan walked across the room, opening the glass door to the odd little booth at the back, and gave an exaggerated bow, gesturing his patient inside with one paw. Resisting the urge to touch either his ears or the back of his neck, Shawn slid off the table - still fiercely conscious of his nudity - and walked in; the door was shut behind him with a whisper of a rubber seal. The squirrel found it to be remarkably quiet inside, so much so he could actually notice the sound of his own breathing. A moment later, the silence was broken by the doctor’s voice, coming over one of the many speakers Shawn suddenly noticed set into the walls. “Alright now, Shawn, if you would kindly face toward the door?” He turned around and saw Leon leaned over his computer, speaking into a microphone. “First up is audio configuration. For this, all you need to do is stand still in the center of the booth, facing forward… chin up a little bit please… yes, just like that. Now hold still and enjoy a musical intermission.”

The serval’s voice cut out, and suddenly a symphony surged up all around him, bathing him in clear tones as if he was standing in the middle of an orchestra pit. No, not quite like that, he decided, because after a few instruments had brief solos that sounded to be coming from different points all around him, he heard a violin that seemed to be floating around behind, then in front of, and then above him; he found he had to fight not to try to track the sound with his head. All told, the music lasted about three minutes, and then faded out, replaced again by the doctor’s voice. “99.8% contour confidence, very nice. Now, for this next part you’re allowed to move freely. You will hear individual instruments playing, and I need you to reach out and touch the spot they seem to be coming from. And you have to look that way, too, as you do it. Begin!”

The first sound was of a flute, a high, soft note that seemed to be hovering in the air ahead and to the left of his face. He reached out with a single finger and tried to poke at the spot it was coming from, and was surprised by a small, visible splash effect in the air, at which point the flute switched into a quick, playful melody, then fell silent. A violin was next, behind him, followed by a trumpet in the air above his head. It became obvious, as he moved to poke at the phantom instruments, that the speakers in the walls were no longer the source of the music; it really sounded as though the notes were coming from fixed points in space.

“And there we go. The system is satisfied; are you? Did the audio and visual effects match up, to your perceptions, with the points you were touching?”

“Yeah, they did, but… how did that even work? What did you just do?”

“Ah, well, you can ask your daemon for the technical details once you have it up and running, but… the short answer is that our ears ‘shape’ the sounds we hear, and by being accustomed to how different tones are shaped at different intensities and directions, we learn to locate their source. Relative volume perceived in, and delay between, the left and right ears gets you halfway there, but this ‘shaping’ effect is how we can differentiate high and low, before and behind. Through your earpieces, your bio-terminal heard the music the way you would hear it and modeled your own personal shaping algorithm, then duplicated that for the second test. And when you looked at the spots as you touched them, it also calibrated the visual display, although that tends to be a little shaky for a day or two as it continues to adjust.”

Shawn went silent for a few moments as the implications of the explanation sank in. “That means whoever’s running this system can see what I see, and hear what I hear, at will.”

Out came the sympathetic smile again. “Technologically speaking, yes, that is possible. However, I assure you that the list of people with access to those feeds is exceedingly small and well-vetted, and even they cannot do so without flagging your current circumstances as an emergency - which logs everything they do for intense administrative scrutiny should it not be warranted. There is, in truth, not a great deal of privacy in the Cradle - but what there is, such as for quiet, personal conversations in a secluded space, is protected as zealously as we are able.”

Well, Shawn supposed, he already knew he was going to be parading around in front of God and everyone in nothing but his fur. What was one more invasion of privacy to add to the pile?

The doctor came over and opened the door. “Alright, a few more items and I can send you on your way. Let’s get your daemon set up. Have you decided on what you want it to look like?”

Shawn paused, then nodded diffidently. “I think so. How do I…?”

The serval smiled again. “Just tell it what you want. It can hear what you say. In fact, there’s a way of talking to it without making an audible sound, but I’ll let it teach you that itself. Have fun; I’ll be over here if you run into any issues.” Turning away, Dr. Sheridan started to clean up from the earlier procedure; it was only then that Shawn noticed the bloody scalpel and had to suppress an urge to touch his neck.

“Alright then… uh, daemon, are you listening?”

A green ‘Yes.’ appeared to hover in the air in front of him for a few seconds, then vanished. Oh, right, it had no idea what it was supposed to sound like yet.

“Okay. You are a male wolf, with black fur. Five foot eleven, fit but not overly muscular. Say… twenty years old. Voice a bit deeper than mine, but not by a lot.”

A crude wireframe appeared in front of him, initially appearing almost comically oversimplified, as if it was from a video game at the dawn of 3D rendering. It quickly adapted, adding complexity and shifting, and then shimmered as the AI worked out the surface details. Within seconds, what looked to be an actual person faded into place over the frame. There was a single hitch where his daemon appeared to freeze in place, but after that its movements were smooth and natural, complete with small idle movements as a normal person would exhibit if standing there and waiting. “Is this satisfactory?”

Shawn stared, nonplussed, for several moments. He hadn’t expected it to be so lifelike. Or opaque, for that matter. But it wasn’t a hologram, after all; there was no reason it should be transparent. “Not bad. Um, are you able to not sound so stiff?” The squirrel shifted uncomfortably. “I know you’re not a real person, but… I’m looking for a buddy, not a bodyguard.”

The avatar suddenly grinned a toothy grin. “Oh good, it’s way more fun when I don’t have to have a stick rammed up my ass.” The wolf-entity offered a sly wink. “Not that I have anything against being rammed there, mind you…”

The squirrel recoiled slightly, more in disbelief than objection. It was going to be a challenge to remember that his daemon wasn’t a real person, at this rate.

“Alright boss, how about we play a little ‘hot or cold’? I’ll start adjusting things. You just visualize how you want me to be, and I’ll read your reactions until I’m your ultimate wingman. Deal?” Shawn could only nod. “Alright, here we go!”

What followed was… a bit unnerving, if Shawn was honest. The daemon’s avatar was so realistic that watching its projected facial structure, musculature, tail size, eye color - not to mention its sheath and balls, given that it had appeared as naked as he was - all shift fluidly from one state to the next triggered a bit of body horror in the squirrel’s mind. Sensing this, the daemon slowed down the pace of its changes and made them almost instantaneous, instead of fluid, which seemed to help. And the bio-terminal was clearly working correctly, because he - it, IT! - zeroed in quite rapidly on the physical appearance he wanted. Once the daemon was satisfied, it looked down at its own groin and whistled appreciatively. “Fuck, if I was a real boy I could do enough breeding for the both of us!” Shawn’s ears reddened at that; he hadn’t consciously decided on how hung his daemon should be, but apparently that just meant his libido took the reins on that point, and well… his eyes had always been bigger than his tailhole, so to speak.

“Um, your voice is still a little off, but I don’t know how to explain…”

“No sweat, bro. I’ll just shift the pitch and timbre a little as we go until I get it right. Attitude and word choice, too. It’s no big deal if I sound a little off for a day or two, right?”

“Nah, I mean, yeah, that’s fine.”

“Cool. So uh, who am I? Someone you know, or just someone you made up? And what’s my name?”

Shawn bit his lip, feeling slightly guilty about what he’d done. There was no getting around it; he had been envisioning someone specific during that process, and the daemon had nailed the likeness.

It was Shane, his former coworker, standing there in front of him.

Well, okay, Shawn had to admit he had no idea what Shane looked like naked, but in terms of face and body type, it was close enough that he wouldn’t even be able to tell the difference. And perhaps modeling his AI companion to look just like a real person was some kind of ethical violation, but… Shane had been the only person at work who made him feel comfortable and accepted for who he was, in a place designed to crush and mold him into something different. And that was exactly the kind of reassurance the squirrel needed in this new environment.

“You’re… someone I know, but I feel kind of weird about doing that, so I’m sure as hell not going to give you his name. Um, lemme think…” Something ordinary, something familiar… but maybe a little nerdy or computery, to help remind him that his attractive, approachable ‘wingman’ was nothing more than an extremely complicated bundle of ones and zeroes. All at once, the perfect answer hit him, and he grinned a bucktoothed grin.

“Jason. Your name is Jason.”

“Sweet! I’m Jason. Jason. JASON.” The avatar tried saying it in different tones of voice, then laughed. “Okay dude, but I can feel an in-joke rattling around in that skull of yours; you’re right on the edge of laughing. Clue me in?”

“Nah man, it’s a nerd joke, you wouldn’t-*” Shawn caught himself mid-sentence. Maybe Shane wouldn’t have gotten it, but…

“Bro, I’m a goddamn supercomputer, and liking the shit you like is part of my job. Oh wait… I think I get it. The file format? JSON?”

The damned thing even had a seemingly intuitive grasp of humor. Shawn nodded, admitting defeat. He was not going to be able to stop himself from anthropomorphizing this software.

Jason grinned triumphantly. “That’s what you get for underestimating…” The wolf turned in place, striking a dramatic, bodybuilder-esque pose. “...the pinnacle of modern software engineering.” He turned back toward Shawn and flexed again, trying to look serious… and then laughed, snapping his fingers, at which point a uniform identical to the one Leon was wearing popped into existence on his body. “Seriously though, thanks for playing along. I can tell you dig me, and that gives me the closest thing a neural network can experience to a rush of euphoria. I’m gonna pay you back by getting you all the fertile bitches that fine piece of squirrel meat can handle.” He pointed shamelessly at Shawn’s groin… and the squirrel looked down to realize he had a raging erection from seeing ‘Shane’ posing naked in front of him.

Oh. Well. That was going to take some unpacking later.

As the squirrel reflexively tried to cover his hardon, Jason turned to the side, addressing someone Shawn couldn’t see. “Hey Curie, has my boy gotten the ‘royal welcome’ yet? No? Well, let’s get on that, chop chop! We got things to see, people to do!”

Shawn looked around in confusion, and noticed Dr. Sheridan looking at the same empty point in space as his daemon - but only for a moment, before returning his gaze to his patient. “I understand things are in order with your daemon now?”

“Y-yeah, I guess so. It’s gonna take some getting used to.”

“I’m sure it will! But I hope you see why I spoke of the system in glowing terms. Now, there is one more thing I need from you before you go, and one thing I need to give you in turn.” The serval paused, seeming to be looking over the squirrel’s head, and… was that a playful smile?

“Which… are…?”

“Oh, the first one is nothing too involved. Just another sperm sample. Our facilities here are far more advanced than at the labs around the country, and we can obtain enough genetic data to determine who would be a good match for you to breed. And… your daemon is updating your profile as we speak, so I have it on very good authority…” The doctor padded closer, opening up another sterile package - oh wait, no, that was just a… a condom wrapper?! “...that you would enjoy a… paws-on approach to sample extraction, hm?” The serval brushed Shawn’s paws gently aside, and unrolled the condom onto the stunned and confused squirrel’s rigid, five-inch shaft. “There are automated options, of course, but…” Before Shawn could even consciously decide how he felt about this, the cat slipped behind him, pressing his lithe, suited body against the squirrel’s bare back, and wrapped a warm, padded paw around his patient’s latex-sheathed cock. “...let me be the first to properly welcome you to your new home.”

And with that, the good doctor went to work, stroking Shawn’s dick with a firm, practiced touch. Confusion and shame took a back seat as pleasure shouldered its way to the fore, and the squirrel’s eyes shut, head tilting back to press against the serval’s shoulder as his knees threatened to melt out from under him to the sound of a high, overwhelmed moan of need. All that anxiety, all his commingled fear and arousal at the decision he’d made, it all surged up into the single certainty that he wanted to cum, and he wanted this handsome, coolly professional cat to make him do it. Submitting completely, he gripped Leon’s free arm tightly to his chest and whimpered helplessly as he felt himself leaking precum liberally into the rubber.

“That’s right, Shawn… don’t fight it. I want your seed - your precious, rare, fertile squirrel-seed - and you are going to give it to me. Isn’t that right?” The stroking picked up in speed and intensity, and it was all Shawn could do to whine out a vague, breathy affirmative as he felt the pressure building to a crescendo in his loins. And there it hovered, right on the edge of release… until Shawn cracked an eye open and looked down to see Jason kneeling in front of him, wagging, handsome muzzle opened wide and tongue poking out as if ready to take the treerat’s spunk into his mouth.

It was more than he could take. His wiry body tensed up hard, prompting Dr. Sheridan to increase his efforts to a fever pitch, and then he shrieked in an utterly unmasculine manner as he was forced over the edge despite his whirling mind, his hips instinctively bucking forward as he filled the condom’s reservoir tip with the warm, milky seed that was his very species’ hope for survival. For his part, the doctor was quite thorough, milking his patient firmly for every drop he could get, until the tip was quite swollen with the teen’s potent load.

“Theeere you go Shawn, let it all out, niiice and easy… goodness, I almost feel guilty taking this much from you, but rest assured… whatever we don’t need for analysis will be frozen and saved for Nature’s intended purpose later on.” Leon hugged Shawn back against his chest for several moments, then very carefully released him and slipped off the condom, tying it off and setting it on a tray for the moment. The squirrel stood there, knock-kneed and wobbling for several moments, before his equilibrium returned to him, and he found Jason standing beside him, arms folded and eyeing the full condom speculatively. “So how many kids do you think that’ll net you, bro?”

“I… I - ah… aaaaah…” It was too much. Shawn dropped himself back in one of the exam room’s padded seats and buried his face in his paws, as Dr. Sheridan helpfully wiped the residual semen from the squirrel’s retreating penis before it could vanish back into its sheath, causing him to squirm.

“I recognize you’re feeling a little overwhelmed right now, but I do need to get this into processing sharpish, so if you would kindly take this…” The doctor’s other paw had an unremarkable looking prescription pill bottle in it, which the woozy treerat accepted. ‘Viritol’, the label said, along with his name. “It’s a standard prescription for all of our breeders. Take it once daily with food - the precise timing isn’t too critical - and over time, it will increase your seminal volume, sperm count, and sensitivity, while reducing your refractory periods significantly. Combined with physical conditioning - your daemon will tell you more about that - it will maximize your contributions to mammalkind’s continued existence. Do you understand?”

As Shawn nodded numbly, Jason barked a laugh and shook his head. “Don’t worry about all that mumbo jumbo, dude. Bottom line, those are the fun pills that let you fuck all day and cum like a garden hose while your mind gets blasted out somewhere near Saturn from the intensity of it. Oh, and this last part is hit or miss, but a lot of guys find themselves packing a little extra meat where it counts after a month or two, if you catch my meaning. If I was real I’d demand a bottle of my own, just for shiggles!”

Unaware of the daemon’s summary, Dr. Sheridan cut off the last few words, taking Shawn’s paws and pulling him back to his feet as he spoke. “I’m sure you’d like to rest, but you’ll find that easier to do in your own room, yes? You’ll have your choice of accommodations in time, but for now your daemon can take you to one of the basic rooms we have set up for new enrollees. Oh, and anyone wearing the same uniform I am is Cradle staff, and will be happy to help you get your bearings if for any reason Jason can’t. But that is quite unlikely.” The serval grabbed Shawn’s luggage, giving it back to him, but left his clothes ignored on the floor for the moment as he ushered the squirrel through a door in the back left. “Now go and get yourself settled. And welcome to New Dawn!”

And with that, the door closed behind him, and Shawn was left standing naked on the pavement behind the intake offices, pill bottle clutched in one paw and the handle of his luggage in the other, with only his new imaginary friend for company.