FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

They call it a shiftsuit. You pull at one sleeve to check the seal between glove and cuff. You feel the elastic snap as you let go. It's a skintight rubbery thing, like a wetsuit but much, much more expensive. The inner layer is insulation, wicking away perspiration and keeping you cool. Then a middle layer that goes rigid under impact. Armor. Finally a photoactive outer coating that acts as camouflage. Active computational fabric that lets you blend into the backgrounds. Parts of the suit can even change shape. It's a miracle of modern technology.

"Go over the controls," the technician says. You oblige by touching each wrist stud. Camouflage control, emergency 'shift', comms, distress signal. And the button that will burn out the suit, singing you only a little in the process, just in case you end up someplace with unfriendly and advanced natives. Can't let them follow you home. The natives, whoever they are on whichever parallel, aren't even supposed to know you are there.

"Congratulations," Doctor Ernst says from the control booth. "You'll be the first to slide into this alternate, and we found one I think you'll like."

You shoot him an inquisitive look but he just grins. The Slide tech has sent people to a dozen parallel worlds now. All volunteers. It's risky work but there are rewards. Who'd turn down the chance to visit a literal fantasy land?

They're not sure why so many parallels are similar to works of fiction. There are a lot of theories. That's all above your pay grade. You're just here to explore, catalog, take notes. Observe.

"Projector is charged," Ernst says. "Enjoy your trip."

With a broad grin you step into the portal. It's your third time through the shift gate. Where have they sent you this time?

You appear in midair a foot above a gray, sullen ocean. There's just enough to curse before you're under water. Ernst does like his little jokes. The water is frigid but that's what the insulation is for. The rebreather starts up immediately and you touch the camouflage control. It only takes a moment to get used to your new environment and by then your suit glistens with scales and sprouts swim fins.

A rocky shore looms close and you kick toward it, feeling the swim fins unfold from your feet. These shiftsuits are really something. Last time you tried out the 'squirrel suit' glide function and the parachute.

Comfortable as a seal in the water thanks to a million dollars worth of survival suit you approach the mossy rocks. As you rise from the waves you see it.

"Holy shit." Only half out of the water, you slide back in until only your goggles are exposed. The ribbed wings, the distinctive fleshy horns as expressive as ears, the black scales....

"Ernst, you son of a bitch. I love you."

Incredible. You ease closer. It's exactly like the movie. The scaly creature is the size of a big horse, with ribbed membranous wings and a long tail sporting secondary maneuvering fins. The shiny black scales are as tough as armor and as flexible as cloth. Yellow eyes with wide black slits. You can even see the straps where a makeshift repair was done to the tailtip fin. A harness wraps its torso, with buckles where the saddle attaches.

Somewhere around here is a human who rides this dragon. Maybe the human's name is Hiccup. Maybe the dragon's name is Toothless. They found a parallel so close to your favorite childhood movie it wouldn't surprise you if both those names were accurate.

You ease closer still, aware that your camouflage is not perfect. The natives musn't see you. But the dragon probably can't talk. You can show yourself to 'Toothless.' Maybe even touch him.

"Hey, bud." You rise from the water within reach of Toothless. Salt water drips from your suit and you grin inside the mask as the dragon turns to face you.

'Toothless' tilts his head to the side, considering you. It's so cute you can't stop grinning. Then, almost too fast to follow, his nose snaps forward. Teeth show in the sudden gape of maw and before you can pull back he engulfs you to the waist. One snap he's got you half swallowed.

"Hey!" You squirm, but the dragon is ten times your mass and lifts you from the ground before you can find leverage to kick him. Your armor goes rigid as teeth hold you in his mouth and a slimy chute of dragon gullet pins your arms to your sides. With another snap of his jaws his teeth are around your knees. He has a wide mouth and a roomy gullet. Toothless swallows you whole with no effort at all.

Too late you remember your camouflage. Your suit assumed the appearance of a local creature. You saw the scales and fins and so did Toothless. He took one look at you, scaly and wet and goggled, and thought 'fish'. Oddly shaped or not, as far as he's concerned, fish are food.

Toothless's gullet clamps down as he swallows, and you feel him bob his head as he snaps up your feet. His sometimes-retracted fangs scrape your swim fins as they, too, slide into his gullet. You squirm and kick, but it's too late. Toothless stretches out his nose and gulps, and the heavy bulge that is you slides down his throat and neatly into his stomach.

Wet dragon flesh slithers over you as you slip down his throat and a fleshy sphincter opens in front of your goggles. Helpfully they switch automatically to infrared and you see the soft folds of Toothless's stomach expand to make room for you. A thick layer of lubricating slime slicked you down for easy swallowing and an even thicker layer of it coats the stomach walls. Toothless is at least ten times your weight and his gut accommodates you easily, your bulk making a new droop to a previously trim belly.

"Damn it." Don't interact with the natives. That's rule one. Well, at least no humans saw you and Toothless just thought you were a fish. No harm done. He'll wonder why his belly is suddenly empty when you shift back out, but that's it.

Slimy pink flesh slides past your goggles as the stomach grows used to your presence. It's hot in here and you're grateful for the suit's insulation. And for the suit itself, which is the only thing between you and a gurgling digestive fate. It's time to go.

Thick dragon flesh presses in from all sides and Toothless's movements squeeze the slimy walls in against you. Your arms wedge into fleshy folds and you have to work your right one free a bit at a time. The movements force out a bubble of air and even from inside the dragon you hear him burp. Hot digestive juices slosh on the other side of the goggles. If it weren't for your survival suit you'd be suffocating and starting to dissolve.

You'd rather get out of here before you explore the remainder of Toothless's digestive tract and you finally get your right arm free. The thick layer of slime, digestive mucus which would be eating you alive without the suit, let you slide your hand across your belly to reach your other wrist. You feel the configuration of buttons and press the Emergency Shift control.

Nothing happens.

For the first time you feel fear. You must have missed the button, right? You trace the ring of buttons with your fingertip. The slime is here too, slick as grease, but each control is a different shape, designed to be identifiable by touch. You press Shift again. Still nothing!

All right, comm. You press that button and there's a spike of static in your ears, fading off to a diminishing squawk. You hit the distress call button too. Nothing at all.

Your suit is rated to stop rifle fire, protect you from temperatures down to a hundred below and up to a thousand. It's airtight, recirculates your breath. The tech who fitted it to you joked that you could end up inside a shark and still be fine, as long as you got there in one piece.

But a shark is not a dragon. As you desperately punch the buttons one after the other you feel them soften under your gloved fingertip. Your suit is designed to survive chemicals, even normal stomach acid. But not whatever makes up the sloshing juices in here. Acid has already gotten into the circuits and Toothless has begun to digest the suit. And once the suit goes....

"Damn it!" You kick, but you're stretched out in Toothless's long stomach with tough dragon flesh pressing in from all sides. You were lucky to reach your other wrist. There just isn't enough room to struggle. It's like a fleshy sleeping bag squeezing you into immobility. Toothless doesn't even flinch as you wriggle. He's has struggling prey in here before and as far as he's concerned you are just a big fish. Just food.

"Come on!" With no other way out you keep struggling, only to feel something pressing in on you. Something squeezes the dragon's flank even more tightly in against you. Then again, further up his body.

Someone's tightening the straps of his harness! Hiccup is putting the saddle on! That means there's someone who can get you out, if he just realizes it's not a fish in here.

"Help! Hellllp!" For a moment you know hope. You scream at the top of your lungs and even through inches of dragon he has to hear that, right?

Except that the tightening strap squeezes all the remaining air out of Toothless's stomach. Halfway into your scream the dragon lets out a long, long belch that drowns out your cry. Even through the suit's armor you feel the squeeze as his stomach fits itself snugly around you. You're just a long bulge now. A temporary bulge.

"Heeelllp!" But you had your chance. You feel Toothless crouch as his rider mounts and the thunder of wings as the dragon prepares to take off. The noisy flapping drowns out any sound you might make and with a sudden surge of his muscles Toothless leaps into the air.

Muscles creak as Toothless flaps, and you feel the squeeze-and-relax as his body moves around you. His long scaly body has just enough room inside it to hold a human, it turns out. He can fly and digest you at the same time.

What a metabolism the dragon must have. Somehow he generates enough lift to fly, even when carrying two humans. One on his back and one in his stomach.

As he flaps the thump of his pulse speeds up and it gets hotter inside him. The thick layer of gurgling digestive juice around you sloshes and churns as it eats into your suit. Pretty soon the suit will be gone. Pretty soon you will be, too. It must take a huge number of calories to power a flying dragon. Luckily he's just has a good meal.

You kick and squirm, for all the good it does you. Toothless probably wonders why his fishy meal still clings to life, but he's busy flying and confidently expects his stomach will eventually win out. He's right.

It's getting even hotter as his stomach juices work on the suit. As your goggles slowly dissolve you see the scales vanish from the suit. The active camouflage layer is gone, digested away. Two layers left before the acid gets to you. You estimate that'll take another minute or two. Then it's your turn, and flesh is a lot easier to digest than the suit.

You press the buttons a last time, barely able to feel them. Both the buttons and your gloves are nearly dissolved away.

At least there are two pieces of good news. First, if you had one deathbed wish, it'd be to fly with Toothless. And what do you know, you are. Just not quite the way you hoped.

More importantly, you haven't violated your chief directive. 'No native is to know you were ever there.' And they won't. At the rate the stomach juices are working, by the time Toothless and his rider finish their flight, you and your suit simply won't exist any more. Toothless's furnace metabolism will consume you and the suit to power his flight. By the time he lands, the bulge that is you will be nearly gone. Hiccup will never know that a man made his way through his dragon's guts. And there is no risk of anyone reverse engineering the suit when it's a few unidentifiable, mostly digested bits buried in a dragon dropping.

The inner layer of suit fails and the acid comes rushing in. You enjoy one last moment of satisfaction - you got to see Toothless! - before the gurgling starts.

They may give up on this parallel after losing an explorer. There are lots of worlds to explore. Or maybe they'll send another. Hopefully he'll be luckier than you were.

Toothless belches up the air from your lungs as you succumb to the hot rush of stomach acid. Oh well, there are worse ways to die than as serving as fuel for your favorite dragon.