FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"Listen, Bernie. I just don't think this is what I ordered." The mephit ran his fingertip over the box lid for the fiftieth time, squinting at what he thought was intended to pass for English but missed the mark by several time zones and maybe a continent. The bluetooth earpiece in his ear crackled again, picking up interference from the half-dozen less-than-orthodox gadgets whirring along in the background and muddling the conversation with what passed for his best friend. He really needed to order that shielding already. "And don't say 'call Supermarket'. I already did. Three hours on hold and they swear six ways from Sunday they sent me what I ordered."

The badger somewhere else in the country snorted. "I told you not to order from Supermarket. They're a corporate tool, man. But noooo, you're Franklin, and you knoooow what you're doing." Another snort, nasally, like someone clearing their sinuses with an auger. "No one ever listens to Bernie. And now you're stuck with...what are you stuck with?"

Resisting the urge to throw the phone, Franklin flipped through the extensive paperwork again. It was full of technical lingo in half-translated Chinese--at least he assumed it was Chinese, anyway--stuff that went completely over his head. And he was an engineer. Of a sort. Garage tinkering qualified! "It says it's a 3D printer. But it's not like any I've ever seen." Usually they didn't come in multiple crates all stamped with logos and what looked like warning badges.

"And just how many have you seen?" Franklin cursed under his breath. Bernie was anti-social and acerbic on his best days; today was proving to be one the bad ones. "Just admit it, Franklin, you got screwed and you need Bernie The Badger to make you feel better." Snort.

"Fine. Whatever." The skunk was angry enough to burst into flames, but the image of skinny little Franklin being enraged was laughable at best. If you soaked him down with water you might manage to get him to 120 pounds, most of that in his tail. At least he wasn't fat, he'd often think to himself as he pushed his glasses up his snout yet again. Being a nervous introverted geek he could stand. No need to add another layer to the stereotype. "Can you help me get this thing together? It came in pieces."

24 hours. 24 straight hours with a soldering iron and schematics so complex the made his ears ring. He'd have nightmares for months about capacitors. But true to his snot-churning word, Bernie had come through for Franklin in his own roundabout way, connecting the skunk with a few folks full of information on the sort of wild-ass technology that had wound up on his doorstep. They hadn't believed him at first, no, of course not. Why should it be so easy? A ream of photos and two video calls later an entire dusty corner of the internet was champing at the bit to get this machine up and working.

"Is prototype," a Russian with an unpronounceable name and a tenuous grasp of English had finally concluded. "Nijia Group. No see much. Thought dead." More digging and searching lead him nowhere further--Nijia Group were the stuff of legend, obscure prototypes of new technology that were beyond anything on the market at the time. But they never sold anything. People told stories of boxes being delivered full of obscure technology and bricks of documentation that still left lots of questions. And inevitably, these mythical gizmos never worked. The mystery went back decades...

Franklin sat there in front of his workbench, eyes bloodshot and fur frazzled from static. In one hand he held his goggles, pausing a bit to give his eyeballs some air; the other clutched a half-empty energy drink in shaking fingers. With the help of a gaggle of over-enthusiastic techies, he'd assembled the blessed thing into some sort of arrangement. The more exhausted he became, the easier it seemed to get, almost as if something was coaching his fingers onward, like the machine wanted him to finish building it. There was nothing quite like that tinkerer's high, the rush of euphoria after putting something together. It was like sex. He thought that, anyways. It'd been a while. A really long while. Folks who wanted to sleep with a techno-nerd and his entire household of inventions, gadgets, and widgets weren't exactly easy to come from.

But there it was. Beautiful in its own silicon skeletal form, wires and ribbon cables, blinking lights and toggle switches. Franklin peeled himself up from his seat and tossed his goggles to the workbench absently, cringing as stiff leg muscles were thrust back into action without what they felt was adequate warning. He popped open the last box carefully and hefted out a bottle of what the manuals claimed to be the printing material, easily a gallon of viscous fluid sloshing around inside a tightly sealed metal cylinder. Must be some kind of new sort of replacement for filament? He'd have asked someone but his spontaneous audience and their support had ebbed away hours ago as the project neared completion; now it was just a skunk and his junk.

The cylinder docked with its input valve easily enough. Franklin crinkled his nose up--whatever was in that tank had some fairly strong fumes and was venting them out. Nothing to worry about, he imagined, but the combination of that odor and his own exhaustion were quickly making it hard to stand and harder to think.

"Just...one last thing to do." Sucking in a deep breath that turned into a juddering yawn, Franklin pushed the big red button that, had the machine been labeled or even in a casing, would have been marked 'Power' or something equivalent. With a soft whir and a small pop of ozone, the inner workings shambled to life, pumps working and gears warming up. It actually seemed to be doing its job.

Not that Franklin noticed. He'd passed out face down on the bench, his earpiece falling off with a soft tap against the plastic surface. The skunk was gone, entirely and completely, taken away by Morpheus on a trip that wouldn't loop back around for some time. It was fine. The printer needed several hours to calibrate itself and prepare the printing matrices, or whatever it was 3D printers did when they first booted themselves up. Technology rarely went quickly. But dreams of attractive people drawing copper traces and teasing him with test probes were the only thing on his mind right then.

So much so that Franklin didn't budge the slightest when a small probe pressed against his forehead, another against his arm, the slimmest of needles pressed into his skin...

Morning. Could it already be morning? Franklin cringed as he rolled his neck and stretched his back out, setting things back into place. Shoulders rolled in a lazy circle. Workbenches made lousy beds, but no matter how many times he reminded himself of that it kept on happening, leaving his pelt matted and dotted with bits of metal wood shavings and metal jink. Looking around for his coffee mug, Franklin blinked his dry eyes; the room smelled of a melange of every thing--solder, sweat, singed fur, an acrid chemical stink he vaguely remembered coming from the polymer soup he'd loaded into the machine last night.

Or it should have been inside the machine, anyways. With a cup of stimulants posing as coffee in one hand and a cold fast-food biscuit in the other, the skunk stared at the reservoir with squinted eyes, turning to tap a clawtip against the fill gauge. Dead empty, it told him. Devoid of content. He shrugged to himself and swallowed a mouthful of mud. It must have a leak somewhere. He cursed quietly to himself and flumped back on his stool. Everyone'd warned him that Nijia's stuff never worked. Why would this gizmo be any different?

"Why should I be so lucky?" he mused with dark humor and grabbed last night's can of Cerulean Buck, pouring the mostly flat concoction into his coffee. "Nothing lucky about Franklin." Another sigh. He'd need to get to cleaning the place up and soon--that rubber blend had to have gone somewhere. If it sat too long there's no telling just how set-in it might get.

All of his thoughts stalled out like a plane in a nosedive as two smoother-than-natural palms rolled down his chest slowly, fingernails pressed against the cheap cotton of his novelty t-shirt. A voice as soft as satin and warmer than Texas in summer whispered into his ear. "Oh, little darling, you're so much luckier than you think."

Franklin spun on his chair so fast he nearly found the floor with his space, catching the edge of the tabletop to keep himself upright. His eyes grew wider than they should be allowed to go at some number of minutes past seven in the morning on a Thursday. Franklin lived alone. He always had. His friends rarely came by, and not a one would ever just...drop in suddenly. But there this person was, whoever they were, taking up space in the garage and swishing a massive plume of a tail behind them, palms resting near their belly, fingers knitted.

A long pause. A sip of enhanced coffee. Two squinted eyes, partially shutting out the light and partially trying to concentrate. Words took far too long to form, but eventually they came about.

"Who the hell are you?"

The skunk in the garage giggled lightly and bounced a little on its bare toes. "Oh you. Isn't it obvious?" Its voice was sing-song, lilting, but so very familiar. Much of it was that way, so reminiscent of something in the back of his mind. Franklin watched in confusion, putting all the numbers together. Some things _were_obvious--it was obviously a skunk, obviously nude, and with a quick glance downwards and a flush of his cheeks, Franklin determined it was male. Very male. But that didn't answer the question...

Franklin's intruder waited a moment before leaning forward, bent at the waist, coming nose-to-nose with one very confused mephit. The faint scent of rubber wafted up, almost imperceptible, mixed with another chemical or two that formed an unusual perfume. The nameless creature continued smiling like the cat who'd done unspeakable things to the canary before smoking a cigarette, then finally spoke.

"I'm you, silly!"

The air in the room gained oppressive volume. It bore down on the still-waking skunk like concrete. His eyes went up, down, up again, now very carefully taking in all the details. Perhaps maybe--was that was his build? Franklin had never been very well built, but was he really that...slinky? And it was his pelt pattern, right down to the way his white front split below his navel and how his tail stripes fanned out as his tail reached its crest. But he'd never had that hair, the long silver locks that reached mid-spine and curled gently from the shoulders down, nor the most amazing purple eyes and almost seemed reflective. And most assuredly he was not, ah, _gifted_quite the way this other male was.

The supposed-clone picked up on Franklin's confusion, adjusting a lock behind his cutely cup-shaped ear before taking in a breath. "The Nijia Group congratulates you on your ownership of the Metadynamix Personal Printer. We hope that you find within its capabilities happiness, joy, and never-ending delight." Not-Franklin spoke in the same tinkling voice as before but the words seemed detached, as if he it were being played back from tape recording. His face barely moved. "I am a Printed Simulacrum, built to your exact specifications using a state-of-the-art experimental polymer compound combined with nanite technology to create an impossibly precise illusion of life demanded by our users. Fully functional, self-repairing, and featuring a lifespan of decades if not centuries, I am the perfect companion. Thank you again for participating in our trial, and may your future be an interesting one!" Not-Franklin shook his head lightly, the animation returning to his features. "Sorry, I'm required to say that. Ad copy, yuck. I feel so filthy." Dainty hands smoothed out thigh-fur, almost like adjusting a skirt. "My parameters indicate you've chosen to call me...Ank. Short for Franklin, I suppose?"

"But--but I never programmed the printer. I never did anything with it!" Real-Franklin fretted, waving his hands all over, grabbing at the documentation and trying to find something relevant in its endless pages of technical jargon. "I'm sorry, I'm just very flustered and confused and--"

Ank leaned in and stroked over his non-synthetic equivalent's ears gently, working to calm him down, not unlike his mother had when he was a kit. "You must have turned on the auto-scanner, because without programming I wouldn't be here." Ank turned over his 'master's' hand with a bit of concern and nodded. "You've definitely had a DNA extraction for analysis. The neural analysis must have determined..." Ank stopped talking as a fit of giggles overtook him.

"What's so damned funny?" Franklin pulled his hand back with a jerk, frustration overwhelming confusion. Nothing here made sense, and it was getting more illogical by the second. Having some thing laugh at him was not helping matters at all.

Ank gave Franklin a smile. "It's simple, my silly little boy. The printer is designed to create your perfect companion." Soft lips, perfect teeth, a delicate jawline dotted with a perfect pink nose pressed close, cheeks rubbing to cheeks. That perfume rose again, and Franklin sucked in a quick breath.

"And you wanted nothing more in the world than yourself--a pretty, happy, self-assured you, but you nonetheless."

Franklin ran his fingers down the length of his muzzle in frustration. "That can't possibly be right." He turned on his stool and grabbed the manual, slapping it with his hand before tossing the papers aside. "It's a 3D printer. They make things out of plastic, rubber, heat. They don't make people! And most of all--" The skunk looked up at Ank with bloodshot eyes that suffered under the abuses of fumes in the air and a sudden rush of caffeine-borne accelerant. "--you are _far_from what I wanted in a companion." Oh he was ranting now, arms flying in every direction and jaw flopping like a very confused cat. "Why would I want some stereotypical bimbo 'boi toy' with a big dick that giggles and minces around like there's nothing in his head but air?" Slim arms crossed over his equally slim chest under an ill-fitting t-shirt, spitting out a puff of air as he fussed frustratedly with the sleeves. "Yeah, you look like me, and I'm sorry for that. The world doesn't need two Me's."

Ank kept right on smiling, which really was infinitely more grating than anything else the pretty thing could have done. Every thing Franklin shouted, the clone let roll off him like water. His slim fingers remained knitted behind his back, and sometimes Ank would roll on his heels and toes, but never once did he move, never did he take his eyes off Franklin, and never did he even try to interrupt. When the tirade ended and Franklin was back to simply huffing to himself, Ank leaned close and kissed his template on the cheek. Franklin startled, ears up and tail floofing out.

"What was that for?!"

Ank giggled lightly and did it again, sliding one hand to the back of Franklin's head, cupping it gently as he pressed against the 'real' skunk, not seemingly concerned in the least about his nudity. "You're such a silly-head, Frankie!" Ank draped himself into Franklin's lap, somehow managing to be virtually weightless. "I'm your perfect companion, remember? You designed me yourself, even if you don't remember doing it." A fingertip pressed into Franklin's forehead; the pad there felt like the rubber feet on some of his electronics. "This gadget up here in your pretty little head made me. It does all of thinking you'd never even guess about!" The scent of his 'companion' was even headier this close. It was slightly intoxicating, but Franklin found it made things...clearer somehow, easier to focus on. "And I'll have you know I'm not some bubble-headed bimbo!" Ank tapped his own forehead. "This is an autonomous learning neural net! I'm as smart as you, and I'll always keep up. I don't sleep, I don't need to eat, and my pheromones can be tailored on the fly to help with stress, focus, tiredness--I even get you high, or give you a screaming orgasm out of nowhere!"

Franklin sputtered but nothing came out. It was like something from a cheesy fanfic, and yet there he was, real as life, covered in a pelt that swayed in the air from a nearby box fan, warm like a real body and talking like a real body and--

There was a faint whisper in his ear, so slight it would have been lost in the hum of the electronics around the room if it hadn't been so close. "Don't think so hard, Frankie. Just let things happen." Ank's palm rolled up his chest, catching the hem of his shirt in between slim fingers, raking little furrows in the fur there. "You need a brushing," the boi-skunk said with a hint of playful disgust. "When's the last time someone properly pampered you, Frankie?"

Franklin needed a second to push his thoughts back into order. Ank was making it difficult, and it wasn't his perfume. "I um, I don't think about it much--grooming's expensive, and I just kinda--"

Ank put a textured fingerpad to Franklin's mouth. "Hush-a-bye, sweetie." The softest tongue Franklin had ever felt in his life grazed his sternum and traveled south, making him shiver in place, hands clutching the top of his stool for support. "I'm going to take care of you from now on, okay?" Ank's smile was like a drug. His perfume made everything as clear as crystal and made his mind turn so smoothly. There was no noise. The clone-skunk's fingers and mouth and tongue were custom-made to tease and coax Franklin. All he had to do was nod, and he knew something good would happen. He could stand to spend a few minutes ignoring the outside world. He'd earned it. This was a gift.

He nodded, and stroked the back of Ank's head, feeling the synthetic hair roll through his fingers. It was fascinating to him--how real yet wrong it felt, how wonderfully and impossibly soft it was, how Ank simply could not exist and yet, there he was, weight and warmth and scent and sound. It was beyond the ken yet undeniably fact. The last fully coherent thought that went through his head was how simply wonderful science had become.

And then he lost himself to the soft expanse of Ank's lips against his cock, ears fluttering at sugary compliments from his clone...

The next hours remained as only a sort of highlights reel in the back of Franklin's mind. Ank had been everything that he had promised and more. They marked the passing of time with new positions and short pauses to recover their stamina, not that Ank needed it. The simulacrum remained perfectly refreshed even as his faux-pelt shimmered with moisture and his member grew soaked in fluids. In a better state, Franklin would have asked why his designers though it necessary to give him fully functional genitalia, but the answer, most likely, was in his designation: the perfect companion. Franklin had found himself worn through and practically drunk on pleasure, pressed face down into the couch-bed that he kept in the garage while Ank penetrated his tailhole for...oh who was counting? He may be made of some sort of rubbery compound, but he was better than any sex toy ever produced, perfectly sculpted to fill his 'partner' and drive the flesh and blood mephit to distraction and beyond.

It was midnight. Ank hissed breath and strained, teeth clenched and ears flattened as he pounded Franklin's backside from above, laying over his counterpart like a blanket, tail flagged high above white-sheathed balls and a pink shaft coated in shining slickness. It was midnight. Franklin had come a half-dozen times at least, but Ank could bring him back to life with tongue, finger, or lips every time. The tinkerer's fingernails sank into his cheap pillow as he bore down and arched his back. Another climax was on the way for both of them--

It was morning again, two days after Franklin had assembled the printer. Ank lay against his back, dozing gently. Perhaps he had batteries? The skunk giggled. A being with a sleep mode? It was something out of corny science fiction.

Franklin shifted his hips gently and winced. Ank was still deep inside him, and the smell of drying jism and heated plastic filled the air. The simulacrum jerked slightly and pressed his hips forward instinctively, making Franklin gasp and grab for his pillow, cock twitching. It must be something about Ank's construction that kept his stamina high and arousal sharp--maybe it was that scent. Was it a pheromone?

He didn't have time to think the subject over for long before Ank derailed his train of thought, and Franklin didn't resist. They had time for another round.

Somewhere in the far away distance, a "Bernie the Badger" sat at his--no her keyboard, smiling to herself and sipping from a plastic cup. The mephit leaned back, arms crossed as she reviewed the last moments of the streamed data from Ank, voluminous tail swishing through the air behind her. The surly badger had been a very useful facade, and definitely enough to help get her prototype cloning system into testing. The directors at Nijia Group would likely chastise her for such an unorthodox and certainly unapproved approach, but the results would be indisputable, and the Metadynamix Personal Printer would likely be on shelves within the fiscal year. Before long everyone would have their own personal companions.

"All according to plan," she murmured to herself, smiling and standing up from her chair with a wince. She was a sodden mess and naked from the waist down, panties hung from the corner of her monitor like an unwanted sock. The skunk shrugged. Even if the plan failed, she had some lovely material to, ah, review.

The End (Perhaps)