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"Thou Shalt Not Make Wrongful Use of the Name of the Lord Thy God."

That's the Third Commandment, and that was my contribution to the "X" anthology, now out from Sofawolf Press. We're able to post them now, so here it is, for your reading pleasure! If you like it, feel free to go to [http://www.ursamajorawards.org/nominations.htm](%5C ""http://www.ursamajorawards.org/nominations.htm"") and nominate away! I love you!

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AUTHOR'S NOTE: IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, DON'T READ IT.

FEEDBACK ALWAYS WELCOME TO: [email protected]

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The power of love cannot be denied. Not by death, not by religion, and certainly not by hardware and software. Love finds a way...any way.

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The purser still kept in his office the Official Clock of Earth, and anyone who lost track of the date--which was easy to do in space if one didn't pay close attention--could request it at any time. The problem was, the Minerva ran on a schedule of shifts, and while twenty-four hours still constituted a day, the term "cycle" was more appropriate. Day and night were antiquated, Terra-based terms that no longer applied to the crew, civilians and cybes aboard what was once the crowning achievement of Earth's war fleet.

Well, there was no more war, and Earth had gone crazy in the interim, and so here was Fennrick Eliasson, raccoon and engineer, filling up his "afternoon" with busy work while humming an old song his mother had used to put him to comforting sleep when he was a kit. He ran a soft cloth over the tip of the torch, coaxing it back to a shine. His compressed reflection grew stronger with each pass until nothing remained but clean, flawless chromed metal. He could just as easily go down to the main replicator, deep down in Engineering, and have another one made, but it wouldn't be the same. His torch burned as hot, and worked as well as the day he had bartered for it. Fenn took tremendous pride in maintaining his equipment. There was a shortage of pride on the Minerva nowadays.

Fenn continued to hum softly against the low thrumming of the ship's engines. He'd gotten used to that within days after leaving Earth for the first time. Nights in the infirmary were the worst: completely insulated from the rest of the ship, it made for some pretty bad insomnia. But here, on Deck 26 Aft with a view out the starboard side, the raccoon was as comfortable as he could hope to be. He led a civilian life, did what was expected of him when asked, and made no trouble with the rest of the ship. That was how he preferred it.

Setting the torch back in its beaten, velvet-lined case, he put his arms over his head and stretched, arching his back over his chair and receiving a cluster of pops and clicks in response. That didn't sound good. At least it wasn't painful. He stood and padded around the cluttered space of his workshop to the touchpad by the front door. He ticked a claw on the CALL button. A gentle chime sounded throughout his quarters, followed by an equally-gentle simulated female voice.

"Operator. Please state your request."

"Chiropractic," he spoke into the room. The microphones embedded alongside each speaker were sensitive enough so that he needn't yell.

"Connecting to Chiropractic, one moment please." A series of tones was interrupted by a crackle as the receptionist twenty-two decks up and a quarter-mile forward answered.

"Chiropractic, how can I help you?"

"This is Eliasson, first name Fennrick. Civilian. I need to schedule an appointment for an adjustment."

"Eliasson, Fennrick...Gamma-42657, Cybertechnician, Procyon, last seen on Terra 10-17?" The raccoon rolled his eyes and clicked his tongue against the back of his fangs. Gotta love procedure. Then again, if the Minerva didn't run on procedure, odds were it wouldn't run at all.

"That is correct."

"What kind of adjustment were you looking for?"

"Just give me everything again; I could use it," he replied. Fenn always thought it funny how people requested adjustments to specific parts of their bodies when there was no cost to bear. For his own good, the raccoon took advantage of the ship's facilities as often as possible. The Minerva had been built a warship, but now had become a city of half a million souls--half a million bodies that could benefit from what the extensive crew had to offer. Working out was fine, but pampering--especially when it was free--completed the package. Fenn would be damned if he'd let himself grow obese and complacent like he'd seen some of the residents of the Top 5, the bigwigs and military gurus.

"One comprehensive adjustment, noted, thank you," said the receptionist. "My earliest appointment is next Thursday at 0930 hours. Is that okay with you?"

"Sure."

"Very good then, your appointment is noted. We'll see you then, sir. Thank you for your patronage."

"Yup," said Fenn, and closed the connection. He knew the little arctic vixen in the Chiropractic office well. Kimi, her name was. Always with a bubbly personality and a freshly-pressed white uniform. She practically disappeared into the thing.

Fenn left the door console and walked through the workshop into the living section of his quarters, shucking off the top part of his flight-suit work uniform so it hung off his waist. The room was only slightly larger than the workshop, but it wasn't cramped by any means. Along the far wall, which was lined with windows from bulkhead to bulkhead, were his bed and two endtables. Directly across, on the wall, was the multimedia screen that provided everything from entertainment to ship schedules to galley specials to pornography.

The screen lit up as it sensed Fenn's approach, and welcomed him with a friendly chime. A window appeared, asking for a command.

"Show me my schedule for next Thursday, starting at midnight," he said, and another window popped up with his scheduled activities for the day, in half-hour increments. The raccoon watched as the 0930 slot, which had previously held a raquetball match with a friend on Deck 19, changed to show his appointment. The raquetball bracket floated around for a moment as Fenn's quarters communicated with the quarters of that tiger up on 19, and as they came to an amenable decision the match was moved to later that afternoon, at 1430 hours. That was satisfactory to the raccoon, and he left things as they were.

He was just about to grab a cup of coffee from the gastrocator in what passed for a kitchen in personal quarters when the doorchime sounded from the workshop. At the same time, the scheduler on the screen switched to the current day, and the bracket for 1500 hours glowed red.

"Eliasson? Fenn, it's Marek. From Maintenance? I have a cybe for you." Fenn tapped the red bracket on the screen to make it larger: 1500hrs, Jonas, Omicron-57103, Canid, Mechanical Difficulties. How very vague, the raccoon thought. It's always "mechanical difficulties." The funny thing was, most of the time the problem wasn't mechanical at all.

"I see that," the raccoon spoke to the room and, consequently, the officer outside his door. "I'll be right there." He shuffled back into his flight suit, zipped it up and ordered his coffee--black with three sugars--from the gastrocator; it would be cool enough to drink by the time he got back to it. Scanning the workshop for his regulars--welding torch, wrenches, solder--he touched the green OPEN button next to the info pad, and the door slid open on its track of compressed air.

It would be fair to say that Fenn was more than a little surprised to see the Dalmatian staring back at him, a toothy grin on his muzzle, spots spread every which way. Marek, the pit bull to the spotty's side, held the cybe's arm in the crook of his elbow, looking positively bored with the mundane task of delivering a malfunctioning cybe to the shop for repair. Marek was dressed in the navy uniform of his station, with the addition of the two yellow stars on each sleeve that denoted his lieutenant status.

Jonas, as he was called, wore the white shirt and black slacks of the housekeeping staff. Fenn had expected something more of the dog when the raccoon had built him not six months ago; however, it wasn't Fenn's decision to make.

"Who did your implants?" asked Fenn, meaning the cybernetic eye and left paw of the pit bull. He knew cybe work when he saw it, even if it was covered by skin and fur.

After a moment of stuttering, Marek replied, "Uh, Vladicek, up on 15-Forward, all the way up by the Rec." Jonas watched the two converse with all the curiosity of a six-year-old child. In some ways, that's all he was.

Fenn said, "next time you go in for a checkup, tell him Fenn from 26-Aft said he does killer work. Almost didn't notice. War?"

"War." It was all that needed to be said. After their pointless victory, people aboard the Minerva didn't talk about the war if they didn't have to. "Well," continued the pit bull, thrusting the spotty's arm in the raccoon's direction, "here you go. Make sure to sign the receipt screen when you close the door. Housekeeping says there's no rush."

"Well, that's a relief for once." Deadlines were a big part of ship's protocol, especially if the cybe was important to places like Navigation, Defense or Medical. Fenn took the Dalmatian and pulled him into the room. "Thank you for bringing him over."

"Yup. See you around. God bless," said Marek before the door slid closed, and Fenn hid his grimace by turning away. He could tell the dog was repeating the words only out of minimal respect. He might as well have not said them at all. Taking the stylus from its holder above the data pad, the raccoon signed the electronic receipt, which disappeared with a thank-you window before returning to its home screen.

When he turned around, Jonas was already in the bedroom, wagging and poking around at things. Fenn didn't remember him being this curious when he booted for the first time. "Can I help you?"

Jonas whirled around, wavering to the right because of the weight bias of his metal arm and leg. He clasped his paws in front of him and smiled again. "No, just looking around, is all." The spotty seemed distracted by the room; his eyes darted around as if he couldn't take it in fast enough. "You changed it since last time. I like it." It was hard seeing the Dalmatian like this: perky, fast-paced, upbeat. That was a telling feature on most cybes: if they didn't have to be sad, why would anyone program them that way?

That's why they put him in housekeeping. Always in a good mood, always receptive. _ It made logical sense. Those still with their original organic brains were kept in positions that fit their faculties. When a neural net replaced the real thing, the jobs had to be simpler, more repetitive. Like housekeeping. Cleaning floors. Fenn thought back to Kemmer, the sometimes-moody, always-methodical Dalmatian he had loved only two years ago. _That one night, when you were depressed about losing your first runabout. I replicated you spaghetti and meatballs, your favorite. You told me I was a great friend, the best friend a guy could have. And then you went down on me.

"Are you crying?" It was Jonas, walking over to see what was wrong. Fenn brushed him off gently.

"You don't feel how dry the air is in here?" the raccoon bluffed.

Jonas cocked his head, his tongue out between his jaws. There were few ways to lie to a cybe. Some were more logical than others. Fenn figured the spotty to be on the low end of the scale. "It's the same as always. Thirty percent. Why would your eyes react just now?"

"I don't know, sometimes they do crazy things." It was the only thing he could think of that would satisfy Jonas' curiosity and quell a line of questions of robotic efficiency.

"I'm glad my eyes never do that," said Jonas, walking past the raccoon with flexible avoidance. "Hey, you changed stuff in here too! The gas canister doesn't have the same pattern of wear that the previous one did. See?" He pointed with a claw to some rather indiscernable lines along the canister's upper curvature. Only something a cybe with a photographic memory would notice. Data storage didn't quite make up for nuance, though the raccoon's programming skills were above par when it came to artificial intelligence.

"Yeah, I had it replaced about four months ago." Replaced, not replicated, because the machine hadn't been able to discern the cylinder from its contents.

"Looks nice," the spotty smiled. "To tell you the truth, I had almost forgotten about you until the housekeeping managers got fed up with me breaking and pulled the data from my head. Then I was like, 'Cool, I get to go see Fenn again!' So, what have you been doing the past six months, two weeks and four days?" Thankfully, Jonas sat himself on the inspection table and watched the raccoon pace in front of him.

It was hard as hell to talk to Jonas like Jonas, instead of Kemmer. If the voice were different, then maybe it would be tolerable. But--God, it was as if the ghost of some other person, someone who was not Kemmer in any way, had chosen to inhabit the Dalmatian's cybe shell. But Kemmer was gone for good, dead-on-arrival at the infirmary where he had been pronounced...and brainless by the time the mangled body had arrived in his workshop. It had taken days, and that was working at a breakneck pace, for the sake of stopping the decomposition process. But each implant, each electrode and circuit he placed brought the Dalmatian one step closer to life. In the end, though, he had given life to Omicron-57103, who would become--at the behest of Housekeeping--Jonas.

"My life is pretty boring, when you get down to it," said the raccoon. Talking seemed to keep his mind clear of more bothersome, baseless regrets. Now that he had a moment to think, Fenn could feel how fluttery his chest had become, how heavy his heart sat...like a lump of flesh more than a life-giving organ. Jonas didn't have a heart; he merely sat on the table, grinning the perpetual grin of customer service and waiting for the next command. But it wasn't that simple; Fenn had brought the Dalmatian online and he knew it wasn't simple at all.

"I doubt that," the spotty replied, swinging his legs in front of him. "If anything, my life's boring. All I do is make beds and clean showers and take out the trash. I don't hate my job like some of the S-1's and S-2's do, because they still have their own brains and they say they deserve better. I dunno. Every so often they'll change up the routine so I can use all of my processing power. Sometimes, if a cybe does the same thing for too long, they'll fry some circuits and get sent away for repair. Then I'm really busy!" Jonas clapped his paws together, as if in anticipation of an increased workload. At least from the outside, his net seemed to be running smoothly.

As long as his "patient" was in the right place, Fenn decided to get the peripheral inspection out of the way. He stood and brought his paws together on the top button of Jonas' shirt before noticing how hard they were shaking. The last time he'd been close to Kemmer (the living, smart-talking Dalmatian), the canine had been the one shaking in an alcohol-fueled lust, biting his lip and too short of breath to do it himself. The raccoon merely stared at his claws and found his way down the shirt. Jonas was wearing a sleeveless undershirt whose white cotton showed only the ghosts of the spots underneath. Jonas lifted his arms for Fenn to remove it completely, and left them up as the undershirt followed suit.

The raccoon's mouth felt spongy and impossibly dry, but he wasn't at a loss for words. "I see the physical therapy has done you a world of good. Where are you, about seventy kilos now?" He wanted so badly to reach out and run his fingertips along the flat, taut stomach with its low hillocks of abdominals that had seen much time in the gym. Where Kemmer had possessed a slight paunch that the raccoon had found endearing, Jonas' torso was hard and defined. Having a half-mechanized body lent itself to exercise, and Jonas had followed the trainers' recommendations to the last detail. Where the aluminum plate Fenn had installed once followed the Dalmatian's contours precisely, now the skin sank down off the edge like the head of a drum.

"Sixty-eight, actually. The trainers say I don't need to do any more, but I like how it makes my left side almost as flexible as my right side. Almost. If only they made lubricant for bones, huh?" Fenn nodded, ignoring the bitterness he was feeling, and turned to grab his stethoscope. The doctors examined all the organic components, but he was responsible for maintaining his work on the metal-and-electronics end of things. Might as well get the simple things--heart, eyes, the spotty's right arm and leg--out of the way before tackling the challenge of diagnosing a problem with his neural net.

Placing his left paw on Jonas' back (which was just as sculped as his front) and leaning in with the stethoscope in his right, he placed it over the thin line of furless scar tissue on the dog's chest, and listened. He heard a steady beeping, and he was satisfied. Anything else would indicate an error and a stored code in Jonas' system. "Anything wrong with your heart?" he asked anyway.

"Nope, nothing. I've got all clear on all systems. No codes, no errors, no nothin'...except, well, for whatever Housekeeping wrote on the report they sent over."

"Of course," said Fenn, who hadn't bothered to look it up because he'd forgotten about this appointment until Marek showed up at his door. "I'll be back in a minute. In the meantime, I need you undressed for the rest of the exam. Okay?"

"Yes sir, Mr. Robo-Fixer, Sir!" Jonas sketched a salute in the air, and for just a second it was pure, unfiltered Kemmer.

"Smartass," muttered the raccoon, though he didn't know which Dalmatian he was speaking to. He turned the corner and entered the bedroom as the dog giggled behind him. Bringing the screen out of standby with a swipe of his finger, he said, "I need a printout on the particulars of my current appointment, please."

"One moment," replied the computer in its monotonic female voice. Fenn heard canine huffs and growls from the workshop and was immeasurably glad he had the expertise to give his cybes as much of a personality as possible. It was as close as he could get to the real thing. And it wasn't close at all. But it was something. The computer beeped that it was done, and the raccoon took the hard copy, leafing through it.

Periodic shutdown due to paradoxical issues in the artificial logic center. Paradox issues? Fenn had heard of cybes becoming lost in an infinite loop of logical thought and shutting down to save themselves a trip to any one of dozens of workshops just like his, but he'd never encountered a cybe that had created its own paradox. Paradoxes were organic issues, and where logic ended, imagination took over...or fear...or anger. Three things that weren't programmable. There wasn't a circuit Fenn could replace that would fix a paradox; he would have to ask Jonas himself...and hope to get an honest answer. Then again, seeing a cybe try to lie was like watching a cub pronounce himself invisible because his paws were over his eyes.

Jonas was nude when Fenn came back into the workshop, and this time the sight did take his breath away, even if the dog's cybernetic parts were plainly visible. On the whole, Jonas's body was Kemmer's body, only smaller and tighter. The belly was gone, and so were the little love handles Fenn had loved to grab onto when they were...intimate. If not for the metal arm and leg that were attached by the virtue of nanobots and scar tissue, and that chest plate, Jonas' status as a Stage-4 Recovery would be nonevident. The dog was sitting in the exact same position he'd been left in, and the raccoon grinned when he saw the "F.E." he'd soldered into the side of Jonas' thigh. The welds were holding up well. Fenn had to hold his eyes level as he came around, but it was impossible to avoid seeing the familiar anatomy, and the flood of memories that accompanied it.

"Your table's cold," commented the spotty. "I'm all goose-fleshy, see?" He held up his good arm, its fur all stood up on end. Fenn blew warm air over it and smoothed it down with his palm pad.

"Better?"

"Yeah, thanks. I coulda done that, but it didn't occur to me. Lots of things don't occur to me. I don't think about it that way." Jonas' eyes, a blue that had taken Fenn hours to perfect, were trained on the floor. He didn't show the least sign of embarrassment; he had no cause to. His emotions were strings of zeroes and ones, rote at best.

Before he could think to regret it, the raccoon lifted that black-and-white chin and spoke close enough to his snout for the canine to analyze his breath: "Don't worry about it."

"Okay." The word was small, and soft, but acquiescent. And Fenn couldn't find his way out of those twin blue pools. He wanted to fall into them and drown and never come out. Why hadn't he changed the color? Oh, yeah, that's right: he had been working with grief, and grief makes people do...things. "So, what did your report thingy say?"

"Nothing that I could understand without asking you first. Do you know anything about 'Paradoxical Issues' in your A.I. center?"

"I'm not that self-analytical. I mean, I can spit out a code and tell you what it is, but I can't tell you why it happened." Jonas was right, though. Anything that wasn't a full-on android didn't have enough skull capacity for a fully-functional net plus processing power plus all the diagnostic doo-daddery it took to pick out the reason behind a problem, much less self-repair. Those machines were rare on the Minerva, even with its replicators. Complex circuitry did not clone well. "I can tell you when the first blackout happened, if that'll help."

"It will." Fenn realized he was cradling the Dalmatian's paw in his, and set it on the table. Jonas brought it to his nose and sniffed, smiling. It almost looked like he recognized the smell. He did; it was the same cologne the raccoon always wore, but it was more than that: it seemed as if Jonas was remembering. That was silly.

Chewing on a claw, the spotty furrowed his brow in thought. He seemed to start, then abort, several thoughts before harrumphing with his arms crossed. "It's hard to say it...it's in my head, but the code doesn't want to translate."

"That's alright, take your time."

"Do I have a soul?" Jonas was looking at him now, the way an eight-year-old would when asking the same question. That fact made it no easier on the raccoon, who was finding it hard to accept that he had just been asked a deeply existential question by a naked canine who he had bedded multiple times in the past, before he'd had to reconstruct said canine's mutilated, brainless body. The Dalmatian had no business asking a question like that. He had no business wondering about it either. But it was what was on his mind.

"Where'd you pull that from?" asked the raccoon.

"One day, like, three weeks ago, I was up on Seven-Forward, all the way at the penthouse suite. You know, the one where Mrs. Weissmuller lives with her daughter?" Fenn nodded; the venerable Mrs. Weissmuller was the widow of Heinrich Weissmuller, the designer and architect of the Minerva. When he fell victim to a faulty airlock during the ship's first space trials, she insisted on taking his place until the ship was completed. Then she had insisted on being present during the maiden voyage, despite the danger of enemy attacks. After the end of combat operations, she had sequestered herself in her penthouse, becoming the Minerva's official recluse. Now she was mostly an old crazy bat, and head of the ship's congregation. That was one of the main reasons Fenn didn't attend services, much as he'd like to.

"Yeah? Is that place hard to clean?"

"Uh-uh. There's never anything to do, but she makes me do it anyway. Seems pointless, but she complains if we don't do what she wants. She thinks we're all robots or something. Anyway, it was Sunday by the Clock, and she was all mad and impatient because they had to go to church and she wouldn't leave me alone in her place because she thought I was going to steal something."

"She does know everything on the ship is traceable, right?"

"Yeah." Sounded like typical Weissmuller drama. "Anyway, she kept harping for me to get my tail out, and I got kind of irritated. I couldn't help it, she was really pushy!" Jonas didn't need to defend himself; anyone who knew that woman's antics would understand.

"She gets that way."

"I finally asked her, why is church so important anyway? She got all snooty, said she went there to get saved, and that I shouldn't be asking questions because I didn't have a soul to save, it was none of my business. I finished and left, but after that I remember trying to figure out what a soul was, and if I needed one, but that's all. There's a twelve-minute gap in my memory after that. That's when another housekeeper found me and rebooted me. I was on the floor by a bulkhead. My eyes were fuzzy, but they got better."

"Here, let me take a look," said the raccoon, pulling his opthalmoscope from the wall and shining it into what passed for Jonas' pupils. The array of tiny lenses and servos looked to be lined up perfectly, and working fine. "You focused?"

"That's what my display's telling me. So, do I have a soul?" Fenn cringed again. You used to. Where a child might be satisfied with a simple explanation or a magical cop-out or even "Because I said so," Jonas' understanding would require something more substantial. Something logical. Except the further one went on the subject of souls, the further down that rabbit-hole, the less logic there seemed to be.

"You have a mind."

"What's the difference?" the Dalmatian cocked an ear, tuned in. Fenn could hear the minute whirrs and clicks of machinery behind the twitching blue eyes.

"There's a big difference. It depends on how you define what a mind is. You have your body, and your senses, right?"

Jonas looked himself over quickly, as if he needed a visual affirmation of that fact. "As far as I know."

"Well, on me, when I have an experience, like..." the raccoon looked around for something he could use as an example, picking up a set of tweezers, because they were the most convenient thing within reaching distance. He then pinched the top of the spotty's organic thigh, watching him bark out and twist away.

"Ow, that really hurt!" Jonas whimpered, bending double to lick at the painful but superficial wound. Fenn gulped; that's something Kemmer had never been able to do. He had wanted to, though.

"It only hurt because your mind interpreted it as hurt. I pinch you, pain signals travel to your neural net, it processes and understands it as pain, and you understand it in the 'feeling' of pain on your thigh. Same thing with my brain, except I have neurons and synapses instead of circuits and programs. The concept is the same though."

"Not *lick* exactly. That doesn't explain about souls," the Dalmatian said. "But I have a mind, right?"

"I like to think you do. You can sense things. You can have experiences, and you can make decisions. The androids don't have minds because they run only on programs. You have to be able to make choices, because you still have organic parts to maintain, and binary logic wouldn't always be the best choice for an organic body. You might rip it to shreds, or decide to remove your own lungs one day."

"That doesn't seem logical."

"Not to you, but to a limited program, it could be the easiest choice, the path of least resistance." Fenn picked up a jumble of wires and motherboards. "This can't recognize the difference between its own metal body and a fur-covered limb. Not unless we give it a command that says, 'See fur? Don't destroy!' But then, if it goes into battle with a fur-covered enemy, it's useless. We have to give it circumstances, and nuances. You can't program nuance."

"Do I have nuance?" Jonas was looking at his cybernetic paw with a sour expression.

"Yes, but that's only because you have all the organic senses to enable you to make decisions."

"So how is a mind different from a soul?" Oh, how the raccoon wanted to go up to Deck 7 and wring that old psycho's neck! It was hard enough having to find the cause of Jonas' shutdowns, harder still to keep from looking down between the sculpted Dalmatian's legs, and just bothersome to try to explain the ins and outs of existence when most of it was based on such an abstract concept as faith. His fingers traveled to his neck, where he twirled a small wooden cross on a hemp string. He wouldn't cry in front of Jonas.

"Now, you're getting into tough territory," said the raccoon, scooting the squat stool closer and plopping back down. He could feel the tempered mask of his everyday nature starting to crack at the edges. His public face, all the praying and smiling and hypocritical nonsense...it all ended at the workshop door. But Jonas wouldn't understand his opinions, or his emotions. In a way, Fenn was infinitely glad the Dalmatian was limited to his circuitry. If there was a way to install a neural net in his own skull, the raccoon might just have done it already. It wouldn't be the first time he'd considered it.

Jonas had clasped his paws and held them, thankfully, between his legs. "I don't see how it's tough. You're the one who programmed me."

"But this goes way beyond programming. You can see that, right?"

"No."

Fenn growled but stared at the floor to dissipate the heat coming off his face. Once again, his heart was coming back to bite him. Why had he put so much effort into Jonas' net? Why had he made the mistake of letting his emotions get the best of him, when his job could have been so much simpler?

It's never that simple when you're dealing with organics. Consciousness has its price, and that price often is fallibility. Words of the Reverend Joyce, from when Fenn had still attended services. The words rang true every time he remembered them.

"Look at it this way," the raccoon continued to the floor. "I have a brain, right?"

"Right."

"You have a neural net, right?"

"Right."

"Okay. That is a physical part of our beings. The part that controls everything we do, the judgments we make, everything. That is the mind."

"Well, I knew that," said Jonas. Fenn raised his head, catching a peek of the dog's sac on his way up. His salivary glands did an involuntary tapdance and he chided himself for being so base. Not like it mattered.

"When you talk about souls, you start talking about the intangible. Something abstract. I know I gave you the power to understand abstracts."

"Like love, right? Just because you can't hold it doesn't mean it doesn't exist?"

"Exactly," said Fenn, impressed that his efforts had not been wasted entirely. "The soul is--what the majority of people tend to believe--is that the soul is a separate entity from the mind, in that it doesn't exist in the physical world." The raccoon's paws waved about in the air as he tried to find a way to express what he was talking about. Eventually, he just shoved them into his leathers. Jonas was studying him dubiously.

"Go on."

Oh, boy. "It's an abstract thing. The mind is connected to the brain...or net...and the body. But the soul, while part of the mind and body, is still a separate entity." Fenn heard his own words and how ludicrous he was starting to sound. Jonas frowned down at him, thinking. "It goes back to what Mrs. Weismuller said. She was mostly right about being saved. She's a nutjob, but, like it or not, she has a soul."

"Why does she get one and I don't?" the spotty pouted, his tail swishing across the table behind him. Fenn didn't want to tread down this path; he knew it would end back in Kemmer's embrace, the gentle arms whose spots the raccoon had counted as he was held, and assured he would never be alone again. God had had different plans, capricious bastard that he was.

"It's not that simple. Not nearly simple enough."

"I still don't understand why I can't go to church. She said that because I don't have a soul I can't go to church, and if I can't go to church then I can't be saved. Whatever that means. It's not bad, is it?"

"No." It's not necessarily good, either.

"So, logically, if I can acquire a soul, then I will be able to go to church. Therefore, I will be able to be saved. Is that correct, or is my argument flawed?" It was hard to watch Jonas switch from cublike naif to coldly-calculating machine. He was flexing his programming, and though Fenn couldn't argue with his logic, it didn't hold water in the million-shades-of-grey world of reality.

"Logically, yes. But that's not the way God works. And don't tell me you don't know about God, because I include that in all my reboots."

"You don't have to be so patronizing about it!" exclaimed the spotty. "But just because I have the information doesn't mean I understand it."

"What do you mean, you don't understand?" What was there to not understand? It was common practice to insert a basic knowledge of religion and the Bible into all recoveries with the exception of the Stage-5 cases, where it would only burden their logic centers. If a cybe heard a conversation, say, just like the one Jonas heard from that bitch, the information would gel with what he or she already knew. The loop would close, and the cybe might even be able to engage in conversation for a short time. Jonas was saying he'd done that, and it had left him wondering. Maybe that was the malfunction he needed to find, just replace a few small parts and presto! No more blackouts.

But he couldn't do that to Jonas yet. He couldn't do that to Kemmer yet. At the very least, he owed the Dalmatian some sort of resolution. Reverend Joyce's words would be of no help; the old badger was just as blindly optimistic as the rest of the church crowd. What was the sense in faith without doubt? That's what made it faith in the first place. Admitting you believed everything and knew nothing...wasn't that the point?

Jonas had crossed his legs. Fenn stood and paced around the examining table, putting his thoughts in order, attempting to create something the dog would be able to comprehend with his...special way of thinking. "Based on your knowledge, Jonas, would you agree that everything is a product of God?"

"God created the universe. Therefore, everything in the universe is a product of God. That's, like, the most basic rule of existence."

"Good. Now here's where we go astray. Organics and cybes have bodies. They have minds. But not everyone has a soul."

"Why not?" Fenn's ears twitched backwards.

"Because not everyone was created by God."

"But that doesn't make sense!" cried the spotty.

"I wasn't done!" replied the raccoon with a snarl that shut Jonas up, and quickly. Fenn had never seen Kemmer like that; it hurt to see it for the first time, even if it wasn't really Kemmer. "Somewhere along the line, we learned how to flaw that perfect logic. The soul is part of the mind, but only some of the time. Only God can create souls."

"So, I have a soul like everyone else. Mrs. Weismuller was wrong. Why would she lie to me?"

"She wasn't lying." A glowing, irritating heat flowed into the raccoon's ears. He clenched his fists. He didn't like to argue. He didn't want to be having this conversation. He didn't want to say what he had to say, but he couldn't lie to a cybe.

Jonas said, "Then you were lying. One of you was lying; it can't be both and it can't be neither, can it?" The original point of the examination had been swept to the wayside, replaced by the spotty's insatiable curiosity for knowledge. And truth, if he could get any from this inane conversation.

"It's more than that. That bitch wasn't lying, because you don't have a soul!"

"How could God create me without a soul then, Fenn?"

"Because God didn't create you! _ I _created you!" And Jonas went quiet, averting his eyes, and Fenn was thankful he couldn't see the tears that had broken free and drizzled down the raccoon's muzzle. He took a cloth from a nearby table and wiped at his face. "It's more complicated than just pure creation."

"I thought everybody was born with a soul," said the Dalmatian in a voice so small it was almost imperceptible.

Fenn struggled to keep his voice even: "They are. But you weren't born. You were built."

"That's not the same?" The raccoon shook his head slowly, seeing the tragic downward cast of those beautiful, beautiful eyes. It didn't look right, and it took a moment for Fenn to realize why: Jonas should have been crying, but he no longer had tear ducts. The raccoon had removed them.

"But I was created, right?" The spotty spoke to Fenn's turned back. He nodded.

"You could say that I created you, yes. I replaced your limbs. I created your heart, your brain, and your eyes. I brought you back to life. It was my j...my job." He paused, unsure: "You used have a soul. But it wasn't yours."

"You're talking about Kemmer, aren't you?" A choked sob escaped the raccoon's open mouth; he couldn't help it. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. Cybes did not ask about their pasts. Of all the recoveries in all the months of war they fought, the one who decided to wonder about his origin was the one whose origin mattered most to his creator. Fenn's heart couldn't take it, he knew he couldn't take it. When he turned around he didn't bother hiding his emotions.

"You're not supposed to know about Kemmer. How--"

"Mrs. Weissmuller again," replied the Dalmatian. It seemed the woman had a hard time keeping her mouth shut. "It was a different day, before my first blackout. She was having a hoity-toity tea with her church friends. I was cleaning her kitchen floor, and I overheard...but I wasn't spying, honest! She was talking about me, and how I was better now than when I was Kemmer. Kemmer this, Kemmer that, Kemmer was a bad egg, a maverick, a smart aleck..."

Fenn practically fumed. That had been Kemmer's social reputation. No one but Fenn knew his other side. His private side. "He could be, yeah...but he could be gentle too." The raccoon couldn't look at Jonas anymore. He focused on a lamp in the corner instead, focused so hard the image began to blur.

"Did Kemmer die?"

"Yes." It rolled out of Fenn's mouth easily. He found it oddly fitting that the first person to ask him about Kemmer's death was inhabiting Kemmer's old body.

"What happened?" No pat on the back, no apologetic condolences. Just the robotic efficiency of Jonas. Perhaps it was for the best.

"I don't think this is something you should know about." It was weak and vague, but it was worth a shot. Better than having to relive the memory through the telling. But Jonas wasn't so easily convinced.

"Fenn, you put my mind in a dead body. I knew that's how it was from the moment you booted me up. I've been shutting down because things don't make sense to me. Don't you usually alter the facts of a paradox to give it a logical resolution?"

"Or you skip it entirely and wipe the memory banks clean, reprogramming the neural net to accept only limited data." The words stung, and the raccoon could hear the venom coating Jonas' reply.

"You wouldn't do that. That's not fair to me or to you. Because you're hurting about something and it would hurt a lot more if you buried it deeper."

"I met Kemmer a little over a year ago," Fenn spoke to the walls as he paced, arms crossed close to his chest, stolid as he could be. "We really hit it off." He decided to leave out the fact he had fallen head-over-tail in love with the brash risk-taker. How they had played basketball in the rec center for a week before Kemmer asked him over for a movie. And how, during said movie, the Dalmatian had pulled back one leg of his shorts and just...just looked at him, smiling.

I knew it all week long, Fenn. Don't think I couldn't smell it all over you. Here it is, yours for the taking.

"You had a relationship." Jonas brought a paw to his muzzle. He must have put the whole puzzle together in that one moment. "I didn't know."

"How could you? You were never supposed to find out." If Jonas were anyone else, anyone with a stricter programming matrix, he would have to format and start over with a blank slate. He looked at Jonas, at his attentive stare that was at the same time so depthlessly naive, and knew that there was still a little bit of Kemmer in there somewhere...not in the physical sense, but in a way he could only feel. He couldn't describe it and he didn't want to. It was just there, and he was satisfied.

"He was a gunner. Uh, a sharpshooter trained for the turrets during recon missions in the later stages of the war. He didn't join up until later on, when the Minerva needed more offense missions. It suited him."

"He was extroverted?" That was an understatement. Walking down the passageways, he'd been a dog's dog. Wore clothes that clung to his arms, made crude jokes in the galley with his buddies. Nobody would have pegged him as a male-male kind of guy, but when the subject inevitably came up, he sloughed it off as if he were the normal one. There were never any questions.

"He was soldier material. He trained in sniper tactics and recon before signing onto the Minerva. We went two and a half years without passing each other. Then, one day, we were in church, sitting next to each other. Just like that." Fenn couldn't remember what the sermon had been about that day, nor did he care. He only saw a vignette, with Kemmer in the center as the edges faded away to a dark blur. Kemmer, who had tapped his shoulder and sent his fur on end all the way down his spine.

Hey bud, you got the page number for "How Great Thou Art?" Damn acolyte kids ran out of flyers.

A week later, as the end credits rolled, he had been gasping for breath through his wadded-up leathers as he felt the Dalmatian swell, then breach him.

Fenn smoothed down his arms and continued, strengthened by the memory. "Things went...well. It was never so serious that he would skip duty, and I wouldn't have let him. That's why, about nine months ago, I let him go when he told me HQ wanted to move him to active recon. For security reasons, they said. Kemmer said they just didn't want to deal with mourners if he turned up dead and had to be recovered."

"But..." Jonas started, but the raccoon stopped him with a knowing, bitter smile.

"They didn't know it was me. I heard nothing from him for three months, and then he showed up at my doorstep. It...was probably the worst day of my life." The image threatened to enter his mind, but for once he looked at Jonas and felt happier. Anything was better than Kemmer's body, crushed and eyeless, on a stainless steel gurney, flopping as it was wheeled in and signed over. When Fenn had tried to hold the Dalmatian's paw, it had been freezing cold. It had taken him hours to collect himself.

"You couldn't refuse?"

"And tell them the truth? That was too much trouble with the military HQ. I figured if I shut up and did my job...that if I did a good enough job...I might make a difference." A soft, delicate paw--a warm paw--settled on his shoulder, and for a split second it was Kemmer. But the raccoon couldn't turn around. He didn't want to let it go. He held the touch in his mind, in his soul, and faced Jonas.

The spotty spoke: "I think you made a difference, for what it's worth." They were both silent for what seemed to be too long.

"Kemmer went on a routine test flight. There was no threat; he was just calibrating the guns for accuracy. Some minute piece of rock was flying...it was too fast to detect...and sliced through the hull on one side of his ship. Sent the whole bulkhead inward, crushed everything...well, you know what I had to replace." Jonas rubbed his robotic right arm. "The, uh, pressure ruined (exploded) his brain and eyes. They said it was instantaneous. I have to believe that."

"And then you built me, huh?"

"Took me the entire day. I couldn't stand to see Kemmer's body like that. It gave me incentive to bring him back to life. As much as I could. I saved what was salvageable. The nanobots took effect not too long before I would have lost the muscle and skin tissue. You almost didn't exist." Fenn felt it unnecessary to tell the Dalmatian he hadn't been able to approach that pace of work, not by a long shot, since the day he brought Jonas online.

The spotty was silent, his attention diverted. Kemmer had sometimes been like that before asking existential questions of his own. Sometimes it was just before he jumped Fenn's bones. "So...all I am is a computer mind in Kemmer's body?"

"Uh...in a purely physical sense, yeah, but..."

"And Kemmer was gone when you started working on me?"

"Yes."

"So, you could say his soul was gone too. Up in heaven."

"That's what I like to believe." In fact, Fenn had never been able to bring himself to think of hell in the way it was taught to the churchgoers. Purgatory, maybe, but hell just seemed so...unnecessarily punitive.

"And then you built me in his body. You put my mind in his body."

"Didn't I say that already?

"And you created life in this body again, right? And a being that is created with life and a mind, therefore has a soul, correct?" Fenn's mind spun with Jonas' intense barrage of questions. He was impressed with the ferocity of progressive logic coming from a brain he had programmed. He never thought it capable of this kind of semi-abstract thought. But so far, he couldn't deny that every statement was logical in itself.

"You could say that, technically--"

"Then, I propose that you are God." At first, the blatant ludicrousness of this out of Jonas' mouth failed to register in the raccoon's ears. But when he finally listened, and saw the Dalmatian half-leaning on his table waiting for him to concede, he felt a deep swelling of anger rising from his gut.

"You can't possibly mean that. Tell me you didn't just use a string of logical statements to lead to a complete and utter blasphemy--" The spotty's ears flattened back along the curve of his skull, his face turning down into the rictus of a child scorned.

"Just because I don't have a real brain doesn't mean I'm stupid, Fenn! You're the one who put all this in my head, remember? How can you have a problem with a perfectly good solution to a paradox that's been shutting me down for weeks?"

Fenn was nose-to-nose with Jonas, with Kemmer, with whomever this thing was standing before him using the name of the Lord in the vainest sense he could imagine. "You can't just go around calling people God! Even if you think it's the answer to your problem, even if it's the most logical conclusion you come to, there are certain things that just...aren't...true!"

"You're just mad that I thought of it, and you can't deny the sense it makes," Jonas retorted, standing his ground, the insubordination intimidating and purposeful. "Gods create souls. You created mine. It's not an organic soul, but based on the conversation we just had--"

"You don't have a soul, based on the conversation we just had, Jonas," Fenn snarled low in his throat. "I'm pretty sure I didn't misspeak. And I know I'm sure you understood me."

"Yeah, I did understand. Perfectly. You talked about all this faith, and believing even when the facts don't support it all the way. And here I am, giving you an argument supported on all sides by facts that you just gave to me, and now you're refuting yourself. Why's that?"

And Fenn, all of a sudden, didn't have an answer. He didn't have the luxury of having the mental equivalent of a stenograph, and his emotions were clouding what judgment remained. He looked away and sighed. "There...there are rules to this. Rules you wouldn't understand. Faith is such an abstract thing, even for me. I can't program morality, Jonas. That's something you have to find on your own. But people shouldn't lie, shouldn't steal or covet, and you don't throw God around like he's the last word. You can get in serious trouble." It was taking an unusual amount of strength for the raccoon to keep his voice even. Anger and sadness, even resentment...all three vied for attention in his mind.

The Dalmatian still didn't believe what Fenn was explaining. "I know you can't program morality, but I sure as hell--heck--know what it is. I wouldn't say it if I didn't believe it. You can't give me a better solution because you have all those emotions in the way."

"But you're just not right, Jonas. You don't see me turning water into wine, do you? I don't perform miracles, I do my job."

"And I'm saying your job is to be God, because you--"

"I am not God!" Fenn fumed, his claws digging holes into his shaking, clenched fists. He wished he was, though. He could bring back the Dalmatian he had known and loved. "You had better stop bastardizing the most sacred scripture we have before you have us both sent to the brig."

Jonas recoiled, his eyes narrowed. It almost looked like he was about to cry. "I'm not! What does it matter? God, God, God, God, okay? Who said there was only one God, only The God, huh? You can say all you want, Fenn. The fact of the matter, the fact you won't believe because it's true, is that you're a god. You're my god. Fuck blasphemy."

Fenn's paw was open, but he sent the Dalmatian reeling back against the table all the same. He didn't want to hear any more; it hurt his head and it hurt his heart even more. This wasn't the same Jonas he'd sent out to duties. This was artificial intelligence gone awry. This was the result of a grieving raccoon trying to recreate something he could never have, and it had ended up the complete opposite of everything Kemmer had been. It was too much to bear. As a shocked Jonas rubbed the side of his muzzle, Fenn covered his and sobbed into his pawpads.

"You...you struck me."

"You think I wanted to?"

"I thought you were big on God. Why are you just as uptight as Mrs. Weismuller? Why are you so upset?"

"If...if you go around saying 'Damn this' and 'Fuck that,' you'll get a lot more than a strike across the face. You represent my work; you're my reputation. I can't have a rogue cybe spouting off lies."

"They're not lies," growled the canine, still massaging his jaw.

"Do you even know what you're saying? All this talk about created souls? Even if you had one, you wouldn't have much chance of getting to heaven," Fenn sniffed, twirling the crucifix below his chin like a fetish. "If there even is a God." It came out bitterly but easily.

Jonas paused. "What do you mean, 'if'?"

"Doubt is as big a part of faith as belief is. It's almost based on doubt, as long as you don't get cynical. I was part of the crowd. I knew...knew...God was there. Before Kemmer died. We met in church. That was everything to us. We had God together, we shared God together. Now, I just don't know anymore." There. It was out. All the weeks of unanswered prayers, all the self-searching and dead-ends...all laid out in one dirty, unpretty truth. How it hurt, hearing the words and believing them.

"You two were together? Like, you know..." Fenn nodded, knowing what Jonas was asking.

"For a time, yeah. Not when he died, but up to about eight months before." The picture came back to him again, and he was swept up in the warm breeze of happy memory, and he was more than receptive. "We met in church. We had fun with it, we agreed on things. He taught me so much about himself. Then we were attracted to each other." The raccoon looked back at the Dalmatian wistfully. "And then we loved each other."

"You wanted him back."

_More than I've ever wanted anything, Fenn thought. "I wanted so badly to rebuild Kemmer. As soon as his ship decompressed, that became impossible. I was under orders to recover a Stage-4, and I did my job. But I made a mistake in installing some extra circuitry. The closest thing to emotions I've done yet. Logic circuits that mimicked organic brain structure. I hoped it would give you more of a personality. I wasn't exactly successful." _

"I think you were. I'm not Kemmer, but I have a personality." Fenn could not refute that one bit. Jonas had shown quite a bit of personality in the short time since he stepped across the raccoon's threshold and back into his life. "Doesn't that count as reincarnation?"

Fenn couldn't help but smile a little at the small bit of logic. "I'm afraid it doesn't quite work that way. The soul gets sent back into another form, at birth. It doesn't just appear when I flip the toggle on a cybe recovery. Besides, we're not talking about the Bible anymore."

"Says you."

"There aren't any references to reincarnation in the Bible."

"Just because there aren't any references to a lot of stuff in the Bible, doesn't mean they don't apply." Jonas was more correct than Fenn wanted to believe. Evolution. Relativity. Certain types of relationships. Everything that encompassed the raccoon's life, in a broad spectrum.

"I'll give you that."

"What was he like?" asked the spotty, and Fenn smiled in spite of himself. He looked up from where he sat on the low stool, and it was easy to remember with the Dalmatian right in front of him.

"Mrs. Weismuller wasn't too far off. Kemmer was a wise guy. Really bold. He wasn't afraid to speak his mind, and would tell you if you were going too far in no uncertain terms. Brought me down to earth. We would lie in bed (after making love, his mind added) and talk about the meaning of life, for heaven's sake. He had so many ideas, they were so far out but he really knew how to convince you. He knew how to love, too. He was so selfless. Nobody saw that side of him but me. He loved to make others happy."

"I know how to do that."

"You don't have to do it for me, though. You can do it for everyone else on the Minerva. I've already programmed that ability into your basic functions. To use an organic phrase, it should be a no-brainer."

"I know that. But I can do that for you, too. You gave me the power; I just haven't used it."

"I'm not asking you to be him," Fenn stood and placed a paw on the Dalmatian's bare shoulder. As the heat transferred to his pads, part of him wished it were true...that Jonas could log off and restart as the brash, trash-talking spotty lover he had known and whom he missed, greatly, every single day.

"You really loved each other, didn't you?"

"I thanked God every day for him." Now the raccoon was talking to himself as much as to Jonas. Not convincing himself, merely stating what he already knew was true. "For being able to bring him pleasure. I just..."

"What?"

"I told him I loved him every chance I got. I always still wanted one more kiss. I know it sounds silly to you, but you never stop wanting that one last little chance to say goodbye. I never got to do that. One more...one more everything."

Jonas'--Kemmer's--eyes studied him, their servos whirring minutely behind the almost-real pupils. Fenn found himself wanting to stare into those eyes forever, like he had done on so many nights while they had pretended to fill in the blanks of the universe. And when the Dalmatian closed the distance between them, he found he couldn't move away. He found his mind exhausted by talk of faith and souls and nonsense and resurrected grief. He found Jonas' breath on his nosepad warm and odorless. And he found, once their lips touched, he had never stopped loving Kemmer.

The room drifted away into silence and darkness as the raccoon closed his eyes and whimpered a helpless little sound, one that communicated a little reticence but a lot of eagerness. The dog's black lips were warm, ninety-eight-point-six warm, and drew him down to an even level. Jonas' technique was on par for a cybe, but what he lacked in skill he more than made up for in tenderness, whether programmed or impromptu. When the canine took in Fenn's lip with both of his, Fenn let it happen. When he probed with his wondrously wet, soft tongue, Fenn allowed it entrance. And when Fenn's paw decided to roam away from the Dalmatian's shoulder, Jonas didn't resist.

For all their talk about morals and the Bible, Fenn was unequivocally sure that this was something he needed more than he could understand. He'd spent six months wishing for one more kiss, one more anything, and now he had it. But for the metal chest plate, which his fingers brushed now and again, it was the same: Kemmer's body, Kemmer's muzzle, Kemmer's paw lightly stroking his side through his leathers and stirring his sheath like Kemmer had always been able to do. He found a similar hardness when he finally willed his paw to go where his conscience told him he had no place going. When he felt the Dalmatian moan down his throat, Fenn knew his conscience couldn't be right all of the time. He didn't even know if conscience had a place in this moment.

They were both breathing hard when the raccoon broke the embrace. Fenn didn't realize he'd been crying until Jonas wiped the tears away from his face. They looked down the dog's chest to find his sheath skinned back by the beginnings of a smooth, pink member. Kemmer's member. Fenn knew every vein, every contour.

"Is that the kind of pleasure you gave him?" asked the spotty.

"One of many. I would give anything to make him happy," said Fenn. "I didn't know you could still do that," he gestured downward.

"Neither did I. I must be one of the lucky few."

"Extremely lucky. It's probably due to your enhanced programming." The raccoon sniffed to clear his nose. "But when I said I tried to rebuild Kemmer, that wasn't my intention." He had no idea his unrequited grief could have led him to build a program so complex that it could lead to such a genuine organic reaction. Intention or no, he had to be honest with himself: he liked it. He continued to stroke the dog, listening to his breathing, watching his face, watching the pleasure he had been so happy to give...the pleasure he was just as happy giving now.

"Do...do you really all believe there's these souls floating out there in some ether, watching us?"

"That's what we like to believe. Fact is, nobody knows for sure. But that's where faith comes in."

"So now, do you still think I don't have a soul? Given that nobody knows for sure?" Fenn paused his paw. "I'm just being logical." It was, most likely, the smartest question Jonas had asked. One that was surprisingly easy to answer.

"All I can say is, I'm absolutely sure that I'm sure of nothing." And that was the whole point, wasn't it? That faith and belief were all about admitting that you knew nothing, but that you had a strong enough conviction to believe that there was something worth believing in?

"But you don't know it's not true, right?"

"That's pretty illogical, coming from you," Fenn replied, but giggled anyway. He hadn't heard himself like that since...since Kemmer.

Jonas smiled, and Fenn could swear he saw the Dalmatian's eyes brighten just like Kemmer's had. "Actually, to me it sounds pretty damn logical." He placed his paw over the raccoon's, starting up the stroking motion again, shuddering in the selfish pleasure. "Do...do you think he's watching? His soul, I mean?"

The raccoon glanced toward the ceiling, as if the disembodied spirit of his lover were hovering above them. He couldn't help it. He liked to think he still shared his life with Kemmer. He'd had enough one-sided existential discussions with his pillow which, unfortunately, didn't talk back to him. Of course he thought, to some extent, Kemmer could see, in his own way.

"I really never gave up hope." He watched the Dalmatian's cock, squeezed it as he spoke. His fingers were damp and sticky. It was irresistable. "I doubted, but I don't think I could ever give up." What he didn't tell Jonas was that thinking of Kemmer watching him was the only thing that had kept him alive for weeks following Jonas' "birth."

Don't you give up, Fenn. You've got more balls than that. Read the Book, 'cuz the Book will save you. You just wait and see, bud. Love ya.

Fenn's fingers spread, pushed, freed the Dalmatian's knot. Jonas bucked and splattered his chest with clear fluid. "Does it feel like Kemmer?" he panted. Running his pads over the slick flesh, there was no mistaking the sounds for anything else. Organic brain or neural net, the voice was identical...the lust was identical...down to the last grunt and growl.

"It is Kemmer," was all Fenn could say.

"Would he be okay with...this?" Down on his knees, looking up at the dog he had loved so intensely he could scarcely believe it at times, the raccoon tried to imagine what smart-aleck, lust-for-life Kemmer would have to say. He thought of the intense stare, the confident gait, the reverence and the deference all wrapped up in one tight, explosive package, and could almost hear it in his head.

Just because I'm not there in mentis et corpus, doesn't mean I'm not there in spiritus. I love you, Fenn. I know it and you know it. Remember that faith thing? I meant it.

Fenn wrapped his fingers around the spotted sheath, squeezed. The tip was inches away. He could feel himself slipping. "I like to think he would want me to move on. He was a big part of my life, but he was all about not being a burden. He'd want me to find someone else to love."

"Like me?" Jonas breathed shallowly.

"I-I don't know." It wasn't a question about which he could properly think. Not with his heart racing, his pants tightening, his mouth salivating.

"I think I count as someone else. If...if it doesn't sound too out of line, I envy Kemmer. If this is just one tenth of how good you made him feel, I envy him."

Tears blurred the raccoon's vision until Jonas was just a black and white (and red) mass in front of him. "He made me want to be the best person I could be. He really loved me, and I gave back everything I could. I still want to." He looked up at the spotty as he felt himself being petted with a gentleness unbecoming of a cybe.

"I think he's still here, Fenn. And it doesn't sound the least bit illogical to me."

"He always said that love means doing what you feel, because it's from the heart instead of the head. I could never understand that...until he died."

"And you rebuilt me with your heart."

"I...I think I did."

"Do you think it worked? To do what you felt?"

"You tell me. You're the result." Fenn's chin lay on Jonas' thigh. Canine musk hung heavy next to his nostrils. He was losing his already fraying grip on intellectual practicality. And the Dalmatian, who continued to stroke him between the ears, right on his sweet spot, was closing an argument he'd been waging in his own head since the first day he had powered Jonas up.

"I believe it was exactly what you were supposed to do. I can't imagine being anything other than me. Neither can you."

"No. Kemmer was right. He was always right."

"Do you still think he's watching?"

Fenn choked out the words: "I know so."

And Jonas picked up his chin and looked at him with Kemmer's eyes. "Then do what you feel." The dog's length twitched against his paw, and the raccoon understood. Even through all the binary, all the calculations...despite everything that wasn't natural about the Dalmatian, Jonas knew how it felt to feel. It may only have been sensation, and nothing more. But the fact didn't change that he was making more and more sense to Fenn every time he opened his mouth. He missed Kemmer with his whole tense, shivering body. He had a chance to give again the love he'd withheld for over half a year. It might have seemed like a mere action, but to the raccoon whose faith was all but lost, there was a faint trace of hope in the one thing linking him to as much closure as he would allow himself to accept.

With Jonas' paw following his head with a firm but gentle grip, he guided his lips to the offered tip and came home.

***

The first thing Fenn noticed was the way the heat from his flushed face drained away once his lips spread open around Kemmer's dripping tip. Like he was doing something that was so incredibly right, awkwardness and embarrassment were out of the question.

The raccoon had known it was impolite to stare, but when Kemmer pulled his shorts up from his thigh there wasn't much else he could have done. It was so sudden, so unexpected, that he felt like if he'd reacted at all it would have seemed out of place.

"You look surprised, Fenn," the Dalmatian said as he stroked himself slowly. Fenn watched, mesmerized. A week ago, they had been singing hymns together in church. A minute ago, they had been sharing a movie after a dinner out on the vista deck. "Am I being too forward?"

It wasn't that Kemmer was being too forward; Kemmer was being Kemmer. "No, not at all," he managed. All he wanted to do was sink that shaft down into his throat, but now that it was openly within reach...his heart was in overdrive.

"I know I tend to jump the gun a little early. But you probably don't know how much you've been teasing me all day long." Kemmer lifted his hips and shucked off the athletic shorts he'd worn to dinner--formal wear curbed his appetite, he'd said--and resumed his idle self-pleasure.

"I told you, I don't take compliments well," Fenn said, finally looking away. His ears were still plastered back. Two things Kemmer could do well to Fenn were flattery and arousal. No shortage of blushing or erections when the Dalmatian was around, throwing his authoritative voice to others while at the same time whispering dirty little nothings into one flattened grey-fuzzed ear.

"Just thought I would skip around all the regular flirting crap and take a chance." The spotty had gotten himself partially knotted now, and the scent was making its way into Fenn's nose. Testosterone. Ammonia. Canis familiaris. Kemmer. "Tell me I'm not wrong, bud, okay? I'd hate to pull 'em back down."

Fenn didn't just tell him how right he was. He leaned sideways across the bed as the Dalmatian took his paw away, breathed in and opened his lips. The action was so natural he wondered why he'd waited so long in his life to do it. And there was no more hesitation. All the way down past the knot, as Kemmer's paws pushed him, with not so much as a sound from either male. When he curled his tongue around the warm shaft and felt the first shot of salty-bitter precum across his taste buds, it was like a cozy, familiar place. It was like coming home.

***

Some of that saltiness wasn't from pre, but from the tears that flowed freely down each side of his muzzle, gathering at the edges of his lips. He was back where he wanted to be, back where he knew he belonged, and if that lasted only a few moments then he would take them and make them his and be satisfied.

"Oh, Fenn, what the hell is that?" gasped the Dalmatian from above him. His legs shook, as did his stomach. Fenn felt for the string around his neck, and grasped the wooden crucifix hanging from it. Kemmer's gift, from a past life.

The raccoon took his mouth away just long enough to say, "I don't really know anymore." And down he went again, still unsure of what he was doing but knowing it was something he had to do. For his sanity. While holding the spotty's shaft with his muzzle, his paws fumbled around before managing to unzip his leathers, which fell to the floor in a heap around his legs. A moment later, he was just as nude as Jonas, and skinning back the sheath that hadn't already retracted around his member. He felt infinitely more comfortable, but he knew he wouldn't last long. He sped up his paw anyway.

Jonas' muzzle was slack and agape with a silent moan. His claws dug in around Fenn's ears, merely following the motion of the raccoon's head because he didn't know what else to do. He hunched up weakly to meet his creator's lips with the urgency of a male new to the wonders of oral pleasure. And, essentially, that's what Jonas was. It wasn't the way Kemmer had guided him, encouraging and grunting every now and again. But the Dalmatian was no less emphatic in his body language.

When Fenn started teasing the base of the spotty's swollen knot with his tongue, the resulting whimpers were an exact match. No matter how much experience, stuff that primal never changed. He grasped Jonas' sac and teased his hole with a claw while rubbing between his balls with his thumb.

"Oh Fenn...oh God...oh Fenn, God..." The raccoon didn't know whether or not that was on purpose, but he didn't much care as long as the hot length between his lips continued to grow. Did it even really matter if Jonas thought of Fenn as a God, when the definition of the word was as open to discussion as the rest of the Good Book? Unlike Mrs. Weissmuller, the Dalmatian didn't have the ability to let his emotions run wild with fantasy and scripture. If only the rest of society could learn to apply the same formula to their faith.

The spotty's breaths came in short, ragged gasps as he felt the soft sac retreat from under his thumb. Jonas' paws beat an irregular rhythm on his head, and he bent over as if in pain. A high-pitched, wispy howl, along with runnels of dog drool, escaped at the same time the familiar taste of Kemmer splashed against the back of Fenn's tongue and coated his palate. It hadn't changed a bit, and the raccoon kept his tongue moving, his cheeks hollowed, until Jonas's rear stopped clenching around his claw and there was no more to swallow. He didn't realize he had started crying again until he let go of the deflating flesh, panting and licking behind his teeth.

"That's what everybody's been talking about," Jonas breathed, paw on thighs. "What're you doing?"

Fenn's cheek lay on the spotty's metal-clad thigh and vibrated there with the movement of his right arm, which was pumping his paw over his cock with an urgency he could scarcely believe. He was barely able to whisper, "Hold me...please..." to Jonas, who silently and obediently slid one paw under his chin while petting him with the other. It was Kemmer doing it in his mind's eye, though. Caressing him like he had done that first night...stroking the side of his face while they kissed and the Dalmatian's skilled fingers stroked him to an explosive, messy climax. The crucifix felt solid and comforting in his pads.

It was when Jonas bent to place a kiss on the raccoon's forehead that he let out a series of sobbing barks as he came, feeling the rippling through his member, pumping until he was oversensitive and out of breath. He collapsed backwards, out of the spotty's arms and onto the floor, where he wiped his eyes and collected himself.

Jonas cocked his head, seemingly unchanged by what had just happened. "I have to say something."

"What?" Fenn panted.

"I know I'm programmed to recognize beauty, based on a multitude of conventional parameters, but watching you orgasm was just about the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my short life so far."

The raccoon paused to inhale. "Maybe I should tweak your net. I wouldn't exactly describe that as beautiful."

"I respect your differing opinion," replied the spotty. "But I like mine better. And if that's what love feels like, I envy you. What you and Kemmer had, I mean."

"Love is a lot of different things," said Fenn. "But if you talk to a million different people, you'll get a million different answers."

"Do you feel better?" And it seemed like such a simple question on the surface. Of course he felt better, but it was a "better" on so many levels. In his own way, Jonas had brought back Kemmer, if only for just a few fleeting moments, but it was enough for him to bridge the gap between his reality and what lay beyond. No matter how he had done it, but the cybernetic Dalmatian had given him a tremendous dose of faith--faith he had missed, faith he had needed--when he thought there was no more to have. And whether soul, spirit or imagination, he had touched Kemmer again, possibly for the last time.

And he was okay with that. He was happy. Fenn looked up at the Dalmatian, and it was just Jonas again. They smiled at each other.

"I feel better than better. I feel whole. People write about this stuff in metaphors, but it really does seem that way." Leaving his leathers on the floor, the raccoon stood and pulled Jonas to him in a tight hug. He didn't mind the cybe limbs and metal plate; the fur was just as warm against his own. Metaphor or not, he felt damn good. So did the canine lips on his, the canine tongue around his.

"So, do you still think I need reprogramming?" Jonas asked when they parted.

Fenn grabbed a cloth from his workbench and cleaned over the tip of his sheath. "I don't see a need to. You came in with a paradoxical blackout issue, and I believe the conversation we had...among other things...fixed that problem without me having to do any invasive surgery. Are you going to be able to resume your assigned duties without having to wonder about souls?"

"If we can agree that no matter how much scripture you spout and how much you believe, nobody ever really knows anything for sure...then yes. Even I can accept that kind of logic. It's like a comfortable END line." Fenn grinned. He understood that very well. "I still think it's a perfectly logical argument to submit that you gave me a soul."

With his paws on the spotty's shoulders, Fenn looked him in the eye. "No, Jonas. You're a part of this society, you're a part of the Minerva's crew..." That was painful to say, but it needed to be said. "And as such, you need to follow the rules. Don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal, don't kill, and especially...don't go around assigning god status to those who don't deserve it. I can't explain it any clearer than that...it's just not something you do."

"What about freedom of expression?" asked Jonas, nuzzling the raccoon's snout. Not a trace of Kemmer anymore...it had all been Fenn's own mind, and maybe a little help from somewhere beyond what both of them could comprehend.

"You're free to express yourself as much as you want, but don't be surprised when you don't get a favorable reaction. Freedom of opinion counts, too." Realization washed over Jonas' face as he made the connection in his own way.

"So, temperance in all things."

"You're catching on." Their embrace was interrupted by a polite chime from the door. Fenn looked over at it with not a small amount of bother. When he reached the pad and saw the call was coming from Housekeeping HQ, his stomach did a queasy flip. Tapping the blinking green icon, he answered, "This is Fennrick Eliasson speaking."

"This is Housekeeping. We sent you Cybe Omicron-57103 to fix a small programming, uh, something that was causing involuntary shutdowns? Do you have a preliminary diagnostic?" Fenn's ears went back at the cruelly impersonal language. He looked over at the Dalmatian, who wringed his paws in front of his navel. The hurt there was visibly obvious.

"No, ma'am. His name is Jonas, and he is not ready yet." Jonas looked floored as he continued: "In fact, I might need a few days to run some diagnostics and test out some new circuit boards. You know, to make sure this behavior doesn't have a chance of continuing." Jonas nodded.

"Okay then," the voice sounded positively unaffected. "We'll call back in four days at this same time. Your calendar should reflect that within the next minute. Is that all right?"

Jonas nodded more emphatically, his ears flopping about, his tail wagging. Smiling. "That's perfect, thank you." The call was terminated from the other end without so much as an affirmation, and before the raccoon could turn around he was surrounded by black-and-white-spotted arms.

"I thought you weren't supposed to lie," said the spotty, the words turned up with his smile.

"One more thing about how messed up society is," replied the raccoon, noticing his coffee mug nearby, untouched and long cold.. "You learn all the rules, and then you learn how to bend them."

"Why did you do that?" This time, it was Fenn's turn to fidget. He drew in a deep breath, searched for the right words, and plunged in.

"I wasn't entirely lying about the diagnostic tests. But it doesn't involve getting inside your head and tinkering around. That wouldn't do any good. I was wondering if you'd like to go to church with me. I think, whatever the status of your soul, you could benefit from some real-world input instead of the rigid confines of data and Scripture."

Jonas smiled and took Fenn's paws. "My memory is very malleable when it comes to new information," he said. "That would be a perfect opportunity to see where the rules bend."

"As long as you take it with a grain of salt. Everybody's got their own version of God and his rules."

"That's something I'll have to get used to. So, what about the rest of the time?" The Dalmatian's smile was knowing, too clever for his own good. Fenn realized he was more transparent than he wanted to be.

"I was hoping I could convince you to, uh, stay for a movie, maybe? And some dinner, if you're hungry?"

Nodding, Jonas grinned toothily. "And I'm just supposed to power off and hibernate out here on the cold, hard table?"

Fenn looked away, more embarrassed than ever. "It's been a long time." For all the healing he'd done, he'd discovered some other, pretty big holes in himself. The loneliness he'd filled with work, now seemed too much to bear again. Jonas was not Kemmer. He would never be. But just seeing the Dalmatian helped. It brought Kemmer's spirit closer in a way he couldn't describe. Another abstract concept out of the reach of organic contemplation. It just felt that way.

"I get that too, from time to time. Probably not the same as you, but it's nicer to just be close to people, you know?"

"Yeah. I know. Do...do you want to go check and see if my schedule reflects that callback in a few days?"

"Sure I can."

"I'll be right there, and I'll let you pick out a movie."

"Okay!" replied the Dalmatian as he padded, naked, into the bedroom. From the waist up, from tailtip to eartip, it was much like any number of times Kemmer had walked the same path. As Jonas turned the corner, Fenn went to his tool chest. Opening the bottom drawer, he pulled out a small digital album. It lit up when he pressed his thumb to the corner. He had to draw his claw over the pad several times, scanning the small holographic projection, until he found the image he was looking for.

Two males, one raccoon and one Dalmatian, dominated the frame. Both were smiling, arms wrapped around each other's shoulders. A gigantic Christmas tree, a Douglas fir adorned with silver bells and tinsel, occupied the background. Anyone else would assume a couple of buddies who were having fun for the holidays. They had been much more. The tree was a holographic backdrop, but Kemmer had requested it when Fenn had mentioned he missed the holidays on board the Minerva.

It was the only picture he had of them together. Sighing, he tapped the album off and put it away. He was all cried out. He couldn't stop smiling.

"Are you coming, or what? I can't get the stupid screen to work!" shouted an instantly familiar voice from the bedroom.

"On my way!" the raccoon shouted back, winding through his equipment to help the Dalmatian. Silly dog...Kemmer had been a bothersome pest most of the time, too.

There were some things no amount of programming could change.

11/1/08-12/14/08