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Valles-New Zootopia, Mares, 10 AF

Gazelle was at some Oligarch's weekly party when her muse chimed in with a none-too-welcome interruption. [Ma'am, I've found a rumor on social media that you might be rather interested in.]

Scanning the crowd, the celebrity singer and dancer gauged that she could go off in the corner and see what had come up without taking a hit to her f-rep. As she pulled up the screencaps and clips her muse had found her eyes widened in amazement. [Judy Hopps? They finally found her?]

[It would seem so, mistress. These rumors are barely more than 15 minutes old. She hasn't been listed on IndEx yet but I'm certain she will be listed at a very high price very soon.]

Gazelle sighed, she had been lucky enough to still have enough of her pre-Fall fortune to buy a sleeve on Mares and farcast to it during the evacuation. But, she knew far too many washed-up former celebrities who had been less frugal and ended up indentured to perverted Oligarchs or jilted ex-lovers. She could probably name half a dozen mammals at this very event who would love to make the first bunny cop their sex slave. Such a waste really. Gazelle could attempt to buy Judy's indenture herself, but she knew the bunny would resent being turned into a mere celebrity bodyguard, and it would raise all sorts of suspicions if she simply let her go. And given her, "side job", suspicion was the last thing Gazelle wanted.

Come to think of it, Judy Hopps might make an ideal recruit for that particular organization. The only problem was, Hopps was better known for uncovering conspiracies than joining them. This would need to be handled delicately, she'd need to see why they were necessary, need to be in a situation where such a thing was possible.

One of the Direct Action security guards at the door caught Gazelle's attention as they spotted and shot down a paparazzi drone that came too close. Of course! They could make good use of Judy and it wouldn't be too hard to engineer an encounter between them and some Exsurgent pack. But they'd need some incentive to buy her.

Her train of thought was briefly interrupted by the approach of an ursine worker pod carrying a shrew woman in his open palm. "Gazelle!" The shrew screeched at the antelope before her. "Have you heard the news? Judy Hopps' Ego has been found."

"I was just thinking about it myself." Gazelle replied to Fru Fru Bigs. Then she was reminded of something about the Soricid Oligarch and after quickly confirming with her muse asked. "Actually, do you still have that prototype sleeve that FauxFur discontinued?"

"Why, yes." The shrew responded excitedly. "Did you think maybe she would like it?"

"Honestly, I don't know." Gazelle said contemplatively. "I was just thinking that Direct Action might want her expertise and that morph would be quite useful to her in such a profession."

"Ah yes." Fru Fru put on a feigned tone of regret and pity. "It's such a shame that FauxFur never put that model into mass production."

"Yes, such a pity. If only someone could convince them to give it another shot?"

The shrew seemed to consider the possibility a minute, then gestured for her carrier to take them away. "Well, it's been nice catching up, Gazelle, but we have some other social obligations to fulfill. See you later."

Gazelle watched them leave, hoping that the hints she'd planted would bear fruit soon enough to make a difference.

---

Secure transmission:

Agent, we have received word that a notable person on our watchlist by the name of Judith Laverne Hopps has been retrieved from dead storage. We require a fork of this individual's Ego for interrogation. You are not cleared to know why.

---

The late Judith L. Hopps looked over the application that presently formed the entirety of the external world from her viewpoint. She had an idea of what was going on, while it was possible to scan and digitally recreate a mammal's brain in a new body those "sleeves" were not cheap. A synthmorph could be fabricated in a matter of hours but it still took years for a biomorph to grow to maturity and since many post-mammals preferred to retain skin biomorphs remained in high demand. As such, many resleeving services offered the option of "indentured servitude" to clients who couldn't afford to buy new sleeves outright. In such cases, the client was contracted to work for one of the hypercorporations for a period of time until they'd been determined to have paid for their sleeve. It was especially popular in off-Ark colonies as transmitting an uploaded "Ego" to a locally fabbed synthmorph or infomorph server was far faster and cheaper than physical transport.

As Judy filled out the application she hoped that her twenty-four years experience in the ZPD merited a short indenture at some decent job.

Once she'd finally finished the hellishly long application she submitted it with a mental sigh of relief and was rewarded with about ten seconds of empty space before another sudden transition. Without warning Judy found herself sitting in an office chair staring across a conference table at two mammals dressed in finely tailored business suits. She was momentarily shocked to feel that she had a body again, but any hopes that she'd already been re-sleeved were dashed at the sight of her stiff CGI fur, she was evidently still in a sim. With that cleared up, she turned to the other mammals, or their avatars, "who are you, and where am I?"

One of the mammals, a wolf who towered over her in his high-backed seat instead asked her a different question. "You are Judith Laverne Hopps, correct?"

The bunny, getting annoyed with how her subjective day had turned out, snapped back, "yes I'm Judy Hopps. The first bunny cop in Zootopia. Now apparently deceased after twenty-four years on the force but hopefully only temporarily. Now, would you mind explaining why ZPD isn't handling my resleeve?"

The wolf sighed as he processed her answer. "To answer your first question, Ms. Hopps, my name is Harry Wolford and I'm a MR representative for Direct Action." He gestured to the guinea pig sitting next to him, "this is Mr. Joshua Lemming, manager of FauxFur's Valles-New Zootopia branch. Whose server this simulspace is hosted upon, to answer your second question."

Judy considered this new information she'd been presented with. "I think I've heard of FauxFur, you're a hypercorp that produces high-quality biomorphs, right?" At the rodent's excited nod she continued. "I'm afraid I haven't heard of Direct Action though... wait, did you say Valles-New Zootopia? I thought that was on Mares? I didn't include farcasting in my resleeving plan!'

Wolford's eyes narrowed at the bunny sitting across the table from him. "I assure you, if there was a resleeving facility left on Ark we would be having this conversation on the old homeworld. As for my employers, we're a relatively new hypercorporation that formed in the aftermath of the event that left Ark inhospitable. What do you remember before your backup?"

Judy's virtual ears drooped in dismay at that statement. Ark, gone? How bad had things become? "I know there were drones killing mammals in the streets, one took off Nick's head with a buzzsaw and I saw another one drop a dissembler swarm on a crowd. I... I didn't have time to check my newsfeeds or get briefed before Chief Fangmeyer made me get backed up."

"Considering your circumstances," the wolf replied, "I might excuse your apparent disrespect. Had you heard of the TITANs?"

Judy thought back, "they were experimental AGIs created by National Security or something, right?"

"An experiment in removing the limitations set in the ancient AGI designs." Wolford specified. "And the worst mistake mammalkind ever made. They hacked into several nanofactories and built themselves an army. Sometimes they sent out Headhunter drones like the one you saw, other times they infected mammals with nanovirii that rewrote their brains into their puppets, or worse. Eventually the government resorted to using antimatter bombs against them." Something about the mention of a nanovirus triggered the momentary flash of void-black tentacles to cross Judy's mind. Disregarding her expression of shock and terror the wolf decided to throw in something a bit more personal to her. "Some of the survivors provided XP footage of you piloting an exowalker, covering their evacuation to the beanstalk. Unfortunately the car that was supposed to be bringing you up to orbit never arrived."

"Did I have a plasma rifle?" She asked. At his puzzled expression she elaborated, "the Chief was worried I'd grab a plasma rifle and run out to fight before they had a chance to debrief me about the drones I'd encountered."

"She had good judgement." Wolford commented. "Listen, Direct Action is a security company founded by the remnants of several police departments, militaries, and private security contractors destroyed in the Fall. We provide contract police services to habitats and cities that can't afford to maintain their own cops, as well as corporate and personal security and anti-piracy or -terrorist protection. Your expertise would be invaluable to us and we are willing to offer you a very generous indenture contract."

That gave Judy pause, was he seriously offering her a job as some sort of corporate cop in exchange for her new body? No, it wouldn't be simply a job, it would be practically slavery, serving the company without any real pay for however many years they could add onto the contract. Still, even without knowing the actual terms it sounded like a tempting offer already. "What did you have in mind?"

Wolford pulled out an anachronistic paper file and handed it to her. "Within is the contract we're prepared to offer. In summary, you are to be retained for a minimum of two years, during that time you will be placed on a rotated duty with security stations across and orbiting Mares, you may also be asked to consult with a specific station on occasion. In addition, we have worked out a sponsorship deal with FauxFur, they have agreed to provide a discount on your new sleeve provided that you use one of their new prototype lapine morphs while on the job. You will even have the opportunity to own the prototype at the end of your indenture. You are free to review the full details in the file if you wish to do so."

Judy picked up the file and info appeared on the cover, she took one look at the byte size and asked "you mind if my muse helps me with this?" The wolf shrugged and moments later a familiar arctic vixen materialized next to Judy.

[Welcome back,] the program said. [Wish it were under better circumstances though.]

Judy stared at the contract in her hand while sending a stream of digital thoughts at her muse. [Sky, in order, I want you to tell me whether our friends here can see and hear you, whether we have mesh access, and your opinion on this contract once I'm done reading it.]

There was a moment's pause before Sky answered. [We've been shunted to an instance of this simulspace running at a subjective speed six times faster than IRL. They might record our conversations but not observe them in real time. As for mesh access it seems that we're on an isolated local mesh, thought there appear to be several databases that I can access.] Judy had been afraid of that, and became even more suspicious at that information. [Shall I check out the databases while you're reading?"]

Judy wasn't even halfway done with the first paragraph of legalese, it made her police academy textbooks look like children's books. [Search all the databases and bring me a summary of the current political climate.]

The virtual vulpine raised a concerned eyebrow. [All the databases?]

The bunny repeated her emphasis. [All the databases you can access. Fork yourself if necessary.]

Sky sighed, then there was a moment where Judy saw two overlapping outlines of her muse. [My fork is away.] She said, then discreetly signed a number "six" in Zootopian Sign Language, suggesting that there were actually half a dozen Skys crawling around the network. Good, she'd caught the hint.

As the AI was working Judy tried to parse the contract. Two years sounded rather short for an indenture based on what she'd heard, but that might have been explained by the FauxFur sponsorship deal. Otherwise it sounded like some of the officer exchange programs she'd participated in. Jumping from one post to another two months later. The only difference was that she wouldn't get paid until the term was over. The only real surprise came when she found out which morph she'd be promoting. "A Fury? Are you kidding me?" She exclaimed out loud.

The Sky fork still watching Judy turned to look at her. [Weren't you the one who said that species shouldn't matter? Why is it so surprising that somebody made a bunny version of the Fury morph?]

[It's a frontline combat morph,] she responded, [a super soldier. Even if you tacked on a cat's reflexes, a wolf's pack instincts, a bear's strength, and bioweave armor you couldn't seriously expect a little bunny to last long on the battlefield. I could understand something like a Ghost but if I were sleeving a Fury I'd choose a species with some more mass than that.]

Sky thought for a minute, then the double-vision effect returned briefly. [My forks reintegrated, based on the new information I've gathered I might have a few ideas.] She signed a "five", one of the forks hadn't made it back for some reason, Judy hoped it had self-deleted if it had been caught hacking. [It would seem that Mares and other locations under Species Consortium jurisdiction are dominated by the hypercorps and Furies are more often employed by private security, in particular the "discrete bodyguard" market. Who would expect to get walloped by a bunny after all?]

Judy sighed, she supposed it did make some sense by the strange logic of the market. It would clearly take her some time to get used to this new Hypercapitalist world. And speaking of which. [Back up, who's the Species Consortium?]

[Ah, yes, the info you asked me to gather.] Sky waved a hand and the same red-and-blue logo Judy had seen before the indenture application had loaded now appeared above the muse's hand. [I'm sorry to say that the United Mammalian Species government did not survive the Fall. In its' wake mammalkind has divided into factions, Mares is largely under the control of the largest faction, the Species Consortium. The government is a representative democracy in part, but it seems that the hypercorps operating in their jurisdiction have their own representative council in the Consortium government. Needless to say, the government often prioritizes hypercorp rights.]

[I'm not sure I feel comfortable about that.] Judy noted. [I mean, I know that corporations held a lot of influence in congress back on Ark, but formalizing it makes me feel a bit uneasy. What about the other factions?]

[Unfortunately, it seems that the other factions have adopted philosophies based on perceptions of certain species' "natural" lifestyles.] Sky continued. [That isn't to say that they are exclusively composed of a specific species or clade, just that they think the social structure is ideal. Of those factions, the Lupine-Lapine Alliance and Chiroptavian Constellation seem closest to old Zootopia in political-economic structure, but the LLA is waning in influence with several of their habitats voting to join the Consortium and the Constellation tailors most of their aerostat habitats for flying species. The Ariesian Republic is a bioconservative military junta, I would advise never going even close to their space. The Tarandus Commonwealth is experimenting with a mesh-mediated form of direct democracy and largely non-currency based technosocialist economy, they seem fairly nice but they've formed an alliance with several anarchist factions.]

[Anarchists?] Judy asked, surprised. [You mean mammals who advocate no laws? How is that even possible?]

[Apparently, they do have some common rules, but they don't have governments in the traditional sense to enforce them. The databases had information on the three largest factions of anarchist. The Mustelidians are anarcho-capitalists, they individually subscribe to different hypercorps that provide security and judicial services to their subscribers. Murinists are collectivists on the other hand, they organize into collectives that provide for their own and reject the concept of money completely. The Vermin are a bit, hard to describe.]

[Try.]

[Very well. The faction who have adopted the name of "Vermin" are nomads, they live in ships that were apparently rejected from overcrowded habitats and continually wander the solar system in loose "swarms" that occasionally stop to trade. Their philosophy is described as a contradictory mess of tribalism and collectivism, hedonism and altruism.] Sky slumped on a chair next to Judy's. [And that's my summary of the major political climate. Anything else?]

Judy tossed the contract file on the table in exasperation. [Just, tell me your opinion on the contract, please?]

[In all honesty,] the AI replied, picking up the file. [It's your best possible option given the situation. If you reject it the odds are you'll end up scrubbing algae tanks for ten years or as some hypercorp executive's "personal assistant".]

The bunny glanced over at the two hypercorp executives on the other side of the table. They'd barely moved since she had decided to review the contract. With a sigh, she took the contract from Sky again, scrolled down to the bottom and found a pair of checkboxes labeled "I agree," and "don't accept." After some hesitation she checked the former.

Slowly the execs' sim re-synchronized with their own. Their movements accelerated until eventually they didn't seem to be moving in molasses. "So, you've agreed then? Excellent." Judy barely had time to formulate a reply before her perspective cut out again.

She found herself waking up on a bed in the middle of a narrow room as a pair of rodent orderlies fussed over her prone form. Judy focused and carefully lifted one stiff arm up to her line of sight. Fur, real grey fur, she was either in a real body now or a reasonably high-res sim. She flexed the new muscles, they felt much denser and stronger than her old ones. Her skin seemed stiffer, probably from the cultured spider silk strung beneath it for armor, but her responses were faster, her arms moved almost before she was done thinking about it. She tried to find her voice, "can I... can I stand up?"

The orderly nearest her face nodded, "you can try ma'am. If you feel like it." Something about his voice sounded odd. He appeared to be the size of a mouse, but his voice was deeper than she typically associated with a larger species, like a rat. And his ears were proportionally smaller, and his tail was thick and scaly instead of thin and furred. He did look like a rat.

"If you don't mind my asking," Judy asked as she sat up, swinging a leg over the side of the bed. "What species are you?"

The rodent orderly cocked his head at her, "Rattus norvegicus, Ms. Hopps. Are you okay?"

Judy looked around the room, it wasn't just her attendants, the whole scale of the room seemed off somehow. Like not everything was the right size. Her eyes caught on a set of length markers set into the doorframe, presumably for the newly sleeved to check their new measurements, and staggered over. On reaching the markers she stretched up to her full height and looked at the number that was level with her eyes. "Why aren't I surprised now?"

---

Two days later, Vermin ship Inconveniently Tied, Festival Swarm

An orange-furred half-mechanical, half-vat-cultured flesh finger brushed against a holo-display showing a newsfeed from the inner system. The headline article read "Hero cop of Zootopia signs contract with Direct Action", the photos were a 30-year-old pic of Judy posing with some of the then-new equipment found in the Cornucopia Machines, side by side with pic of a much more muscular bunny in modern armor standing next to a pair of other officers, the scale made it look like the second bunny was over a meter tall. "Heh," the hand's owner gave a low chuckle. "Good for you Carrots. Maybe you'll have the chance to arrest me again."

---

Zootopian-Eclipse Phase faction equivalents:

Species Consortium: Planetary Consortium

Lupine-Lapine Alliance: Lunar-Lagrange Alliance

Chiroptavian Constellation: Morningstar Constellation

Ariesian Republic: Jovian Junta

Tarandus Commonwealth: Titanians

Mustelidians: Extropians

Murinists: Anarchists (with a capital "A")

Vermin: Scum (duh)

Glossary of EP terminology: AGI: Artificial General Intelligence, an AI with the same mental capabilities of a human, or Zootopian mammal. They can even be sleeved in biomorphs. Though they usually have some built-in limitations or safeguards on how much they can "grow". Rights vary depending on faction.

AI: A less-than-sapient artificial intelligence, usually specialized with little to no ability to develop new skills.

Muse: An AI specialized in social interaction, usually included with a user's mesh inserts and then customized to fit the user's specifications. A descendant of early "personal assistant" AIs such as Siri, Cortana, and Alexa. Muses follow their users when they resleeve and are included in backups. A few eccentrics have been known to use AGIs or forks of their own Ego as muses.

Seed AI: An artificial intelligence designed with the ability to compile, improve, and expand its own code, the most notable being the TITANs. Extremely illegal after the Fall.

Ego: The "software" that composes the consciousness of a sapient being. Most factions in EP believe that the Ego can be downloaded into new bodies while remaining the same person.

Ego Bridge: A device used to upload and download Egos to biological brains. Uses a combination of high-def scanners and nanomachines to read and write the neurons. May be used for immediate resleeving or off-site backups. Biomorph brains require 10 minutes to upload from and an hour to download to, pods take half the time as their brains are only half-biological and synthmorphs don't even need a bridge to upload/download.

Backup: A copy of an Ego stored in an inactive state until the original dies. At which point the most recent recoverable backup is activated and assumes the original's life.

Fork: A copy of an Ego active at the same time as the original. Many people create forks for multi-tasking or as messengers, then merge with them once the task is complete. Though it is also possible to make a fork of someone without their consent, by stealing a backup for instance. Many governments require forks to be "pruned" with reduced capabilities from the original.

Cortical Stack: A near-ubiquitous implant consisting of a network of sensors throughout the brain that take scans and make a backup once per second, which are stored in a synthetic diamond memory core at the base of the skull. The memory core, or "stack" is essentially a backup hard drive for a brain. If removed post-mortem the stored backup will remember everything up to their death.

Farcasting: Transmitting an Ego over long distances, often interplanetary. Usually cheaper and much faster than physical space travel. Generally the Ego buys or rents a sleeve at the destination and either sells their old one or has it held in cold sleep if they intend to return. Though farcasting forks also is not uncommon.

The Mesh: The successor to the internet, a wireless mesh network that connects most settled areas and includes ubiquitous augmented reality.

Mesh Inserts: A very common brain implant that connects individuals to the mesh. It has similar functions to an early-21st century "smartphone" but generally has much more processing power available. Also usually hosts the user's muse.

Biomorph: A sleeve that is almost entirely biological, grown from an embryo either "naturally" or in a cloning tank, though most have mesh inserts and a cortical stack these days. Even with forced growth it can take anywhere from 18 months to 3 years for a biomorph to grow to maturity, and with most of the population still in dead storage after the Fall biomorphs are in high demand. There are a variety of different "morphs" or models that have been made in a wide variety of species engineered for specific environments such as underwater (Aquanauts), microgravity (Bouncers), or the partially terraformed surface of Mares (Rusters); or they may be designed for jobs such as research (Mentons), scouting (Ghosts), secretarial (Hibernoids) or combat (Furies).

Basic Biomods: Nearly all artificially produced biomorphs, and half of all children born more recent than 20 years Pre-Fall, have a set of "basic" biological modifications built in. These include immunity to most natural diseases, a halved need for sleep, and healing at twice baseline speed.

Synthmorph: A purely electro-mechanical sleeve with an optical computer for a "brain". Despite being generally more durable, not needing to eat or drink, and the fact that most can be fabbed up in a matter of hours, there exists considerable discrimination against synthmorphs in many places. A common name for them is "the Clanking Masses". In addition, many mammal Egos find it difficult to adjust to life as a synthmorph and the mass-produced "Case" morphs tend to malfunction on an almost daily basis, leading many to indentured servitude for the chance at a biomorph.

Pods: Half-machine, half-meat. Assembled from a hodgepodge of cyberware and vat-grown organs pods were originally intended to be sleeved by AIs and act as a fairly cheap workforce. However many have found them to be affordable alternatives to biomorphs, if they can live with the social stigma. Given their half-cybernetic brains it's also possible to make pods based on species that don't normally have brains complex enough to host Egos, such as crabs, squid, gibbons, even some extraterrestrial fauna and flora.

Ark: The planet that was home to Old Zootopia. Known to humanity as "Sky Ark".