FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

I knew she was trouble, the moment she set her hooves into my office.

The lazy Friday afternoon sunlight cut visible rays through the dancing dust particles, disturbed by the slight breeze that came in with her. It gave the mess of empty pizza boxes, old paper folders and pieces of electronic equipment a slightly unreal feel, as if the entire scene had been dreamt up by some old school 2d movie director. Her elegant coat, dark glasses on her graceful gazelle body, her unclad hooves; she fit right in, as she stood there and asked:

"Are you a private investigator?"

I put my clawed feet down and cleaned my feathers.

"That's what it says on the door, madam."

Some instinct told me to send her away, but I needed the money. And she needed me.

"Can I hire you to retrieve some data from my ... former employer?"

...

Two hours later, I climbed out of the cab and made my way into the lobby of an office building. I walked straight up to the dog-receptionist.

"My name is Black. I have a business appointment with Miss Claire Peterson, 5th floor." I told him.

"One second, I need to check that for you."

As expected he entered the name, blinked, then called his superior. He studied me for a bit, then left me. "Please wait here for a moment."

Just as planned.

Three minutes later he apologised and told me what I already knew. She didn't work here anymore. No, unfortunately I could not tell him the reason of my visit. Yes, I'd have to make a new appointment. Good bye, and thank you.

I tried to look a bit bummed as I walked out and took another ride back to my office. There I started my old fashioned desktop computer and went to work.

The little chip inside a piece of chewing gum, now under the reception desk, had just enough power to last for one night. But it had already done its homework: it had listened to enough network traffic to log in to the company wifi, then discreetly opened a tunnel for good old me to have a closer look by myself. A badly secured router later, thanks to the info from my client, I was on the file server in question.

It was a substantial amount of data, but now that I had my ravenclaws in the door, I had time. I pushed it through a number of darknet relays, then started the download to my own network.

Easy money, expenses all covered up-front, by her. Maybe my hunch had been just paranoia?

Or so I thought.

Then I happened to notice an email from one of my paid datacenter subscriptions. "Account termination notice."

At first I thought it was fishing SPAM.

It wasn't.

Then I found out something was off with my credit card. The payment got stuck on "authorization pending..."

I started getting worried.

Then I got a call from my landlord. He, too, sounded worried, wanted to know If everything was OK.

I had a suspicion that maybe it wasn't.

After a bit of digging I found out that my name had triggered a warning from a subscription service he had signed up to avoid rent-scammers.

I knew now, I was in trouble. Luckily I also knew someone I could call.

By calling, I meant old fashioned text chat:

"< You gotta help me, I have no clue what's going on!"

"> Lemme run a few checks." "> ..." "> LOL!"

"< What is it?"

"> Congrats! You're pregnant!"

I blinked.

For context, last time I checked, I was like 95% certain that I was male. Even if I had miraculously mixed up my own gender - not completely unheard of with my species - ravens lay eggs! As such, I was pretty certain this couldn't be the case..

"< What do you mean, pregnant?"

"> LOL! NOOB! Preggers! Knocked up, flagged, marked, blacklisted, p0wned!" "> What did you do? Got caught sharing warez? Ran a C&C server in your bedroom?"

"< Of course not. You know I'm careful. Why preggers?"

I had thought I knew all the terms by now. Apparently not.

"> You know, these days, when you buy shit in a pharmacy, if you buy drug A, your account gets a flag so they don't sell you drug B, if B kills you when mixed with A. You know that, right?

"< Yeah. But I don't even take any drugs."

"> This isn't about drugs. If someone is pregnant, they aren't allowed almost ANY drugs, so no matter what you want, it hits that flag, the system asks the cloud, and the cloud says: "You ain't getting no prozac sucker!" " "> Some asshole got into these systems and raised all the flags on you, credit cards, health insurance, criminal file, everything. They got you knocked up!" "> Your accounts are all flagged. No matter if you buy shit or call someone or just turn on the fucking light in your smarthome, it first asks the cloud. They are spying on you. And when they wanna fuck you, they can. Anytime.

"< Fuck! What do I do!"

"> Get an abortion. LOL!" "> Dump any account, credit card and subscription you can get rid of. Get new aliases, a new name. Change address. But before that, get someone to unflag the crap you can't change. Social security and Criminal records. That, or p0wn them back. Good luck!"

"< Thanks man."

"> Had a blast. LOL! Better get moving, those suckers are 100% going to SWAT you."

SWATTING, for those unfamiliar with the term, meant calling the feds and telling them there's a hostage situation at your address and that you're armed and violent.

By now it was too late to call my own friend at the PD, so I decided to heed the warning and lay low until monday.

When I finally got to my little emergency hideout, the data had almost finished copying.

Most of it was encrypted though. By the time I finally had it unscrambled it was past midnight.

There were videos. Quite a lot of videos. With a lot of fun content. Apparently they recorded some kind of sex orgies. I zapped through and found dirty hot shit. Some faces I knew from the news. Politicians. Celebrities. Big fucking money.

And cubs.

Cubs getting fucked by big fucking rich celebrities.

Holy shit, this material was hotter than antimatter. I realized some people would kill to prevent this from getting leaked. People with money to buy a small army of assassins. I started getting nervous.

I opened the latest file.

And then I regretted it.

Although, to be honest, at first it started quite appealing. Miss Claire was in it. Chained to a table. It looked like some BDSM setup. I thought I had found the reason why she wanted these files.

I could tell she knew the camera was there. She kept looking at it, almost as if she was looking straight at me.

Then they drugged her. I don't know what was in the syringe, but it made her high and horny.

Soon later they had her arch and tremble in that table while they played with her with little leather whips, chains and other small torture devices.

I got slightly worried when the knives came out. But Claire seemed to have been OK when she came into my office, right? Couldn't be that bad...

With a mix of fascination, arousal and horror I watched the scene take its course.

They got more and more extreme. I started wondering how she got that patched up again so neatly. At least she seemed to have fun, in her drug induced frency.

I had to stop watching when they cut her belly open.

I stopped the player, horrified, then, by chance, looked at the file's timestamp.

No!

No, It couldn't be!

The file had been saved on the server this very evening. While I was already copying their data. What I had been watching had been happening, right then: while I went hiding in a rooftop shed on an old factory building, they had captured her, and bound her to that table, and then...

I had to know. I had to see the end...

No ... I realised, too late, I had not really needed to see... this...

I cried. Even if Claire had gotten me into this trouble, she hadn't deserved this.... Not like that!

And all the time, she... she kept looking into the camera. As if she knew I was going to watch. Was she warning me? Was she blaming me?

Paranoia started overcoming me. They knew my name, flagged my accounts, drove me out of my home. Were there killers already outside waiting?

Could I save myself if I just deleted everything?

No... no!

They might have flagged me preggers, but they hadn't gotten me yet. As long as I had the files, I had leverage. I still had network, I still had connections.

I was going to knock them all up!

All I needed was a plan...