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The Porn Note

Chapter 1: Life and Death

By Draconicon

"...And that concludes the list of those to be healed this evening. If you have heard your name, report to the local hospital for your session with Lord Jonah. Thank you for your time and attention."

The iguana on the screen faded away, leaving it nothing more than an oversized computer monitor once more. Malcolm heard the teacher start up her lecture again, but the mouse was already tuning her out. He shook his head, leaning back from his desk as she droned on, his attention already elsewhere.

Still no luck, he thought. He tried to tell himself that it was just because the list was very long, that there was no real reason that his mom should be moving to the top of the list, but...

No, no, better not to think about that, for now.

Thankfully, the lecture on advanced flight design was already almost over, and it didn't take the professor long to reach the end. He gathered up his notebooks, had them stuffed in the back of his bag, and was already on his feet by the time the seal was giving her assignments for the weekend. He let the details - reading, as usual - click into the back of his head without paying much attention. He'd remember it; he always remembered these things.

The classroom doors whooshed open on squeaky hydraulics, barely ahead of the flood of people looking to get free. Artificial smells of grass and water, just off enough to be rancid rather than pleasant, left him wrinkling his face as he trudged across the grounds. Each step had its own unnatural spring, a reminder of what they were dealing with everyday.

Malcolm paused, narrow tail twitching behind him as he looked down at his feet. The 'grass' had long-since been replaced with artificial ground, green and wrong. Cheaper in the long run to just get something that couldn't die, according to the schoolmasters. Meant that Lord Jonah didn't have to keep coming back and fixing it.

Personally, he thought it was just cheapness.

Shaking his head, he adjusted his school uniform with one hand and kept walking across the ground. Technically, he had one more class left, but he wasn't in the mood for dealing with European History today. It was an elective, anyway, and the teacher wasn't too bothered with him skipping. Usually.

Fuck it, I want to get home, the mouse thought as he stepped from fake grass to lumpy concrete, his shoes rolling underneath him for a moment before he adjusted to the cobblestone-like paths from one building to another. A wave of students behind him suffered a similar problem, but were fine within a step or two. For him, it took a big longer.

Mostly because of the large tiger that had come from the opposite direction.

"Oof!"

He stumbled backwards, almost falling down before a striped hand grabbed him by the arm, pulling him back upright. Malcolm shook his head before looking up, and then rolled his eyes.

"You know, Taj, you could at least say hello instead of knocking me over."

"I'm sorry about that. I was practicing a new form of meditation."

"What's this one? The Carpet of Friendly Bodies?"

"Walking Through Life, actually. I haven't tried it in crowds, though."

"Yeah, well...Can't say that's gonna work out well."

With the crowd dissipating, it wasn't so hard to work his way out of it, and he could hear Taj following behind, the tiger muttering little apologies and 'excuse me's to everyone that he passed by and bumped into. By the time that they were out of the cluster and onto one of the smoother side paths, he was able to take a look back, and immediately groaned.

"Well, that's your problem, isn't it? Walking around with your eyes closed?"

"It's part of the meditation."

Malcolm started to laugh, then stopped. The mouse tilted his head to the side, looking up from a lower angle.

"...You're cheating."

"Only a little bit."

"Hey, you're the one that said you're supposed to keep your eyes closed when you meditate."

"Baby steps. I won't be able to meditate at all if I get trampled or run over."

"Then how did you -"

"I only have them open a little bit. I can't see the really tiny things."

"Why you -"

"Hey! Guys! We skipping class or something?"

They turned, Malcolm already preparing some sort of snark before he saw who it was. As soon as he saw those swaying hips and the slender, scaly arms of the lady approaching, he swallowed them back, coughing as he cleared his throat.

"Uh, maybe, Rashii."

The lady snake stopped a few feet away from them, one hand on the shoulder-strap of her backpack, the other on a steel railing at the side of the path. The pose didn't do much to hide her already-exposed 'assets,' particularly as she was wearing her shirt unbuttoned by a good way. Malcolm blushed a bit, looking away, while he could feel Taj looking at her with more than just a simple bit of appreciation.

Rashii smirked, the mouse lowering his head as she spoke, his cheeks burning.

"Maybe? Looks like a definite, little man. Something up?"

"Just don't feel much like dealing with history today."

"Heh. You, Taj?"

"I'm already caught up with Photography. Professor's not entirely satisfied with some of the subjects, but you know how they are. All caught up in the System."

"Heh, you skipping too, then?"

"I shouldn't, but I don't see a reason why not. After all, I should never be idle."

"Uh-huh."

"I merely respect my heritage, Rashii; my parents would simply die of shock if they were to see me idling rather than working."

Not far off the mark, the mouse thought as the tiger and the snake continued to banter. He'd met Taj's parents some time back, during his first year at university. The pair of them had been the epitome of pushy immigrant parents, hoping to get the best for their son. The idea of them seeing him not doing work...yeah, it might at least give them a panic attack before they leaped to violent lectures.

Very violent, for that matter. Looked like Taj still hadn't replaced the bag that they'd ripped with a few broken plates. He shook his head, looking around the campus, at the steel buildings, at the small bubble that surrounded the whole place. Anywhere to avoid looking at the snake's unbuttoned top.

It wasn't that Rashii was trying to tempt him, he knew that much. The idea that the snake would even be interested in him was impossible, considering the boys that she teased on a regular basis across the campus. She hadn't been enticed into one of the System projects for procreation, yet, but he imagined that it was only a matter of time with her...antics.

A little shiver went down his spine as he imagined that, and he tried not to let his mind stay there for long.

Hoping to change the topic, he cleared his throat. When they didn't stop talking, he turned around to look at them, and immediately blushed.

"Oh, come on..."

The tiger and snake continued kissing each other, tongue and all, for a couple of seconds before they finally broke apart. No sudden love there, just a teasing smirk for his blushing cheeks on Rashii's face, and an amused grin on Taj's. Malcolm rubbed at his face, trying to get the burning heat to go away.

"Did you have to do that now?"

"Well, it seemed like we were doing little else."

"And besides, Taj is a good kisser. And you're a lot funnier looking when you're blushing."

"Blame my albino mother for that...It's only because I'm so pale."

He shook his head.

"Anyway...I think I'm going to head back to my place."

He wanted to make an invitation to Taj for a bit of gaming or something, but with Rashii along as well...he just didn't have the guts. The pair of them arched their eyebrows, and he shook his head.

"It's, uh, just some work that I want to get done. You know how it goes."

"Would you like some help?"

"Thanks, but, uh, no thanks, Taj. I can handle it."

"Little man, you trying to run off to some girl or something?"

The blush returned with a vengeance, and he tried to shake his head. No sooner had the suggestion come, though, than Rashii continued running with it, elbowing him in the side, nudging him along the path until he was almost falling back on the fake grass.

"Hehehe, come on. I bet there's someone out there just waiting for you, with an attitude like that. Who is she? Some girl from another school? Or someone from here?"

"I, I'm not meeting anyone!"

"Hehehe, sure you're not. Well, Mal, make sure you get some protection. Unless she's some sort of System girl. Then you better knock her up."

"I'm not -"

"Hehehe, whatever you say, man."

And with that, Rashii had her arm looped through Taj's, and the pair of them strolled off. At least the tiger had the decency to look back with a shrug of sympathy before they were out of sight.

Malcolm stared after them for a moment or two, and then kicked the side of the railing.

"Yeah, yeah. Great. Let them run off thinking that's happening. A System girl...Heh...like you'd even have luck with that."

Even so, it could be worse. Might be that they thought he was that petrified of Rashii, or of doing anything beyond the most basic things with Taj, for that matter. He was pretty sure that neither of them knew the way that he tended to...think...about them, in the darker parts of the night. He desperately hoped that they didn't.

Putting his hands back in his pockets, the mouse made his way past the classrooms and storage buildings, heading towards the edge of the school proper. The robots that worked at keeping the grounds clean gave a few beeps of acknowledgement as he passed by, and - after scanning his badge - stopped blocking the way, as well.

His mind couldn't help going down memory lane as he walked along, remembering how he had met both Taj and Rashii on the same day. For the tiger, it had been pretty simple. They'd roomed just across the hall in the student dorms for that year, and it was a matter of getting to know the people around him. Better to have some idea of what they were like rather than just going through the year blind. The fact that Taj had the whole eastern thing going on, with a lot of cool stories and constant gifts of art and TV from places out from under the System, only made him better as a guy to hang out with.

Rashii, on the other hand...

He shivered, remembering how embarrassing that had been. Going in to gym for the first time, still half asleep after a long nap from getting settled in, and walking into the girl's showers. He'd run face to boob with her, considering the height difference, and he'd never lived it down. She still teased him about it when he was least expecting it, calling him Mr. Motorboat and occasionally shaking her breasts right in his face.

Just the thought was enough to get him a little stiff in the pants.

Still, despite the teasing from her and the weirdness from Taj, they were his best friends on campus. Not much to speak of, there, but they were good people, and both had done a lot to keep the bullies in Sys-Sol off of his back. There was only so much you could do against a tiger that had a blackbelt in some unknown martial art - though he'd never seen Taj use it, thinking about it - and a snake that could belt you hard enough that you would go through a window.

He just wished it wasn't so awkward dealing with them, sometimes.

The mouse reached the edge of the campus and its protective bubble. He got in line with the rest of the students heading home early, some of them first years to the university, others, like him, in their fourth year and close to graduating. They all had the same line to wait in, and most of them were shifting impatiently as they waited for their ID badges to be read.

While he waited, he reached down and pulled out his own ID badge, just to make sure it was ready. Last thing he needed was to be without it on the wrong side of the barrier. The last time a student had that happen...

Well, suffice it to say they weren't seen again.

The line moved slowly, past two titanium-plated robots and two steel-plated Sys-Sols. They checked the badge against a scan, an image, and a file, and would pass the student through if they matched. If they didn't, well, there was room in the holding cages beside it.

There were two people ahead of him when the scan went wrong. Malcolm heard the beep, and immediately took three steps back. There was plenty of room; everyone else did the same thing as long-barreled weapons came down, pointing at the unlucky coyote.

"Where did you get the fake ID?" one of the armored men asked.

"I didn't! It's not fake, I'm a student here."

"Name."

"Jemaine, Jemaine Renard. I swear, I'm a -"

"Files say that Jemaine Renard graduated early, two months ago."

"...I swear...I'm not..."

"Restrain the intruder."

Malcolm looked away, but he still saw the flashes from the various weapons. When he looked back, the coyote was restrained, bound up from head to toe in strings of hard-light cuffs. His clothes had burned off, and his fur was singed in places, keeping him from moving if he didn't want further damage to...various areas. The robots put him into the cages, and then the line reformed.

Thankfully, there were no further incidents. Malcolm let out a deep breath of relief when he was on the other side, knowing he wasn't the only one that did it. He'd heard that the machines sometimes malfunctioned, and after getting a reminder of what could happen, he had been all too worried that it would happen to him.

Outside the bubble, the impurities in the air waxed and waned by the moment. Even in the same breath, he could be taking in completely pure, clean air for half of it, and the most toxic fumes he could imagine for the second. There was a constant shifting along the scale, making it hard to keep his head without leaning on the wall around the school bubble, and the street swayed with the effects of the chemicals on the air.

Long-ingrained instructions filled his head, reminding him of the route home. He crossed the street beneath the heat and haze of the hovercar traffic, groaning as some of the high-powered ones - and some jock jerks - puffed out the jets harder than they needed to. He crawled the last bit of the distance beneath one of the low-power ones, and dragged himself into one of the narrower, one-lane side streets.

Two more turns, and he was back on his own block, which was little more than a string of apartment buildings that rented to students. Each one had its own, smaller bubble, pushed out through rounded windows to keep the air impurities out. They flickered here and there, some of them going down before coming back up, but it was better than being outside.

Malcolm debated stopping at the little burger joint at the bottom of his building, but decided better of it. He was already woozy, and he didn't have the energy to get carryout.

Just a few more buildings. Few more buildings down, and you can -

"Hehehe, what do we got here..."

The mouse stumbled to a stop, leaning against the end of one building and almost bashing his head against the start of another. Voices...out in the open? That...was weird.

Curious despite himself, he leaned around the corner, trying to get a better look at whatever was going on. His vision was hazy for a second or two, then the air cleared again, giving him a clean burst of air and letting him see fine.

There were two people in the alley, one with the head-bubble of Lord Jonah's personal assistants, and one girl that was marked with the silver S along the side of her neck. A System girl, then? Then...

He blushed as he realized that she was naked, one of her arms pressed against the wall almost as if it was pinned by a ghost, while the other was down between her legs. The otter girl was desperately touching herself, rubbing her pussy at a speed that he had only seen in porn films, while she was whimpering and shaking her head.

"Please...please stop...I don't want..."

"Oh, you want it. Your body does, anyway."

The shadowy bubble-head leaned in, stroking the otter's cheek. He had something in his hand, something rectangular that Malcolm didn't recognize. A book or a tablet, maybe? It was hard to tell.

The stranger touched it, though, moving his hand around, and the System girl started rolling her hips, fucking herself on her hand. Her eyes, however, told him the story. She was...she was crying. She didn't...she didn't want this.

The idea of a System girl not wanting sex was absurd. As soon as a female signed into the System, she was bound by that law. She went from being a normal person to being an engine of procreation. Intentionally given bursts of life from Lord Jonah to be eager and willing, and to be hyper fertile for her task. The idea of any of them being like this...

This is wrong...this is so wrong...

Malcolm shook his head. He had to stop it. He had to do, do something!

He looked around, and finally spotted a broken-off bit of metal. Not much of anything, but it was something. Rusted enough to make him wish he had gloves, it fit his hand well as he picked it up. The metal rod sagged slightly as he pulled it over his shoulder, and he aimed it as best he could.

"Hey! Leave her alone!"

The shout made the bubble-head look his way as the rod went flying, and that was all that saved the stranger from taking the metal right in the eye. Instead, it scraped across the side of his face, but more importantly, it broke the bubble.

As the metal came cracking back down to the ground, thick glass-like stuff followed it, and so did a bundle of other things. The stranger coughed and gasped, clutching at his neck before running away, heading off towards the other end of the alley. Malcolm, a little high on the feeling of being a hero, ran after him.

He rounded the corner of the building, expecting to find the stranger coughing and gasping. Bubble-heads almost never had the stamina to deal with the pollution. Instead, he found a hovercar powering up.

Fuck...

He started to reach for his phone, but stopped. The signals of a communicator weren't dangerous, but certain radiations from the battery could cause massive problems. It was part of the design reasons that people weren't allowed to bring communicators to work or on aircraft. It would literally cause an explosion.

He reluctantly put the phone back in his pocket as the hovercar shot away, shaking his head.

Well, hopefully he learned his lesson... It was a little lame, as a line, but it was better than nothing.

Unfortunately, the System girl was gone. He couldn't talk with her, see if she was alright...get her number...

Malcolm slapped the side of his head at the idea, reminding himself that she was already part of the System. They didn't date, they just fucked, incubated, and gave birth. There was no way to get in a relationship with someone like that.

Even if his dick didn't particularly care about -

He shook his head again, making his way to the little bundle of stuff that the stranger had been carrying. Avoiding the shards that were collected all over the ground, he picked through the other things. Another communicator, which he avoided. A couple of credit chips, which he pocketed. And...

Well, it wasn't a tablet. It took him a moment to realize what it was, and it took touching the pages inside of it to believe that it was real.

A book. A notebook, with real paper. He hadn't seen anything like that in his life. Hell, he was pretty sure that his grandfather hadn't seen anything with real paper in it. Maybe, maybe his great grandfather, but even that would have been pushing it.

Why would someone have...paper? he wondered, picking up the book and turning it around. It was fairly non-descript on the outside, just a red binding along the spine and with a scarlet cover and back. No title on it, no clue to what it might have been for. As he ran his finger along the front, he realized that there was a pen hooked into it, attached by some sort of string.

Very old, he thought. I think my mom used to use pens and styluses...wonder if I still remember how to write...

He opened the notebook, and saw that there were two kinds of handwriting on the inside. One was old style, ornate to the point of being nearly unreadable, while the other was a bunch of chicken scratch that might be readable...if his eyes were clear.

Realizing that the air was shifting again, he pulled himself to his feet and dragged his dizzy self all the way back to his apartment. The robot on the inside scanned him in, and he took the elevator. There was no way he was taking the stairs and giving someone a free room after he fell down from how dizzy he was.

His room, at the very end of the hall on the sixth story, was as basic as student rooms could be. A small-ish bed that wouldn't have fit anyone but a mouse, a small chest at the foot of it for his laptop and other electronics, a couple of charging ports, and a desk were all the furniture he had. Once, he'd had a fridge, but he was pretty sure that someone had broken in and taken it, at some point. It didn't matter that much; he'd been using it for cold storage for a few ideas, and they were on the way out, anyway.

The mouse closed the door, and immediately the bubble-seal began clearing the air. He took a few deep breaths, feeling his head clear and his balance get back to normal, and sat down on the edge of the bed.

Okay, just a quick look, then call mom, he thought. No getting into it the way that you usually do. No deep bookworm stuff. No -

#

4 hours later...

The mouse dragged the notebook down from his bleary eyes, glaring at the alarm clock built into the head of the bed. Already past seven, which meant that his family would probably be heading out to the holiday that they were talking about last week. Some sort of retreat in one of the Unaligned States, where the air wasn't quite so bad, and where people weren't so constantly targeted by Crypto. He hoped it'd do his mother some good, but they'd be out of reach for the next week or so. His communicator's range didn't go that far.

Well...did it again, but at least this was interesting. He looked back down at the notebook. It couldn't be much more than a novelty item, considering all the stuff it proposed, but it was one hell of one.

It had to be based off of Lord Jonah's book of life and Crypto's book of death. The pair of them had been running the world for years, decades, since before he was born. The idea that someone had taken the idea of books that ruled life and death and made a joke on them was...well, more than a little sacrilegious, but hey, it was cool.

"The book of porn..."

He chuckled a bit, dragging a finger along the description.

In your hands lies the control of libido, sexuality, and the deep self. The red book, of lust and love, of passion and romance, of the rutting beast. Here, lay down your fantasies, your dreams, your desires, and see them come to life before you.

There were other writings after that, but it shifted from the overdone, almost biblical writing to something more akin to regular handwriting. The chicken scratch at the beginning mentioned something about fucking a dog - Takes all sorts, I guess. - before it shifted into something more lady-like, almost upper class. That one asked to be ravaged by a werewolf.

He'd never seen a werewolf, but he could get the appeal.

The fantasies went on and on, from the mundane romantic dinner with a happy ending to things that left him holding the notebook at arm's length and wondering if he should have washed his hands before touching it. Yet, despite it all, he found himself intrigued, and kept reading through the fantasies, finding his cock growing harder and harder at this strange voyeuristic pleasure of reading the fantasies of other people.

Three pages in, he was jerking off, and he was almost on the edge of climax when he found the latest entry. It was quickly written, almost like someone had done it with the roughest, greatest speed they could.

Otter girl, System chick. Want to see her rape herself. No pleasure from it, just need. See her hate herself as she gets off.

His hand froze on his cock, his eyes going wide as he realized that was what he had just seen, what he had saved the otter from. He remembered the fear in her eyes, the way that she didn't want to be doing what she was doing. It should have been impossible for a System girl...yet, there it was.

"No, no no no. That's...that's impossible. That's..."

Malcolm shut the book, throwing it away from him as he sat up. The mouse's cock continued to throb between his legs, and he tried to ignore the way that it bounced and bobbed. He leaned forward, shaking his head.

"No, no, it's a joke. Some pervert just thought he'd write it out to make it worse for her. Make it better for him. There's no way...there's just two books. Two books. That's it."

But what if...

His cock jumped a bit at the possibilities, but he was a scientist. He was an engineer. The books of life and death, in a way, he could accept because they were opposite ends of the spectrum. They were natural events that happened regularly, and the mathematics of how they worked was undeniable. Each book hastened or stretched different mechanics of the natural world, or inverted them, or something. It ached and hurt the logical part of his mind, but he could accept it.

A book of sex? No, no, no, that was...

Hot, but impossible.

He flopped back on his bed, shaking his head. He'd take the book in with him tomorrow, hand it in to a police station or something. Then the Sys-Sols could track down the handwriting, get the asshole that was trying to rape someone, and nail him with a bit of evidence. It wasn't a confession, but it was something.

...Just as long as he wiped his fingerprints off of it first. Mental note.

His communicator rang, and he tapped the side of it, placing it by his head to answer it.

"Hello - oh for the love of -"

"Mmmph...sorry...wrong button, Malcolm. You getting sound or -"

"Video, waaaaaaay too much video."

The mouse's cheeks burned and his cock throbbed as he saw his friends in the middle of a rather...enthusiastic round of sex. Rashii had Taj pinned to the bed, her breasts were bouncing - Fuck, I'd forgotten they were that big... - while the tiger smacked her ass and made her bounce up and down a rather wet-looking cock. He stared for a moment before looking away, closing his eyes when that didn't work.

The sounds kept coming, though, filling his ears with the wet squelching of cock slamming into an eager hole. He whimpered.

"W-wrong number?"

"Yeah, sorry about that. You want to -"

"No!"

He ended the call, shaking his head as his cock throbbed ever more insistently against his belly. Malcolm reached down to it, and despite his own embarrassment, his own misgivings, started stroking it again.

The mental image of both his friends in the middle of something he wanted to join so much made sure it didn't take long for him to go over the edge. He came in short order, spurting his load all over his belly, and he flopped back on the bed, shaking his head a few times. It was already drying, crusting up against his fur, and he didn't have the energy to get up and get clean.

Instead, he closed his eyes, groaning.

"What's wrong with me? What the fucking hell is wrong with me?"

The book momentarily forgotten, he slipped into the sleep of the guiltily gotten off.

The End