FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Special thanks to psydrosis, DukeFerret and fopfox for proofreading!

Chapter Three

And Came Right to '78

"Now that you're done telling me all the extraneous details of your life, can you tell me what a 70s themed cafe doing in the middle of District Fourteen?"

The aesthetic was nice, but Miles felt a shackle from his ankles to the stool. Whatever had hit him back on the streets had worn off, and now he was trying to understand what he'd just dragged in. Clacking plates and knives over the loud but humble music felt safe enough, he gathered. Though he tapped his fingers on the table and let his mind wander, scanning the light sources behind the floating upside down umbrellas giving the restaurant its color, fighting the urge to check his Pod instead. Their table was round, just like the others, each textured as a vinyl record from a long dead artist, theirs titled, "(You Make Me) Red Like a Renegade". All corners of the room were decked out with these sorts of things, intervaled by forgotten Pod designs and old pictures of a completely different world. In the center was a curvy, glass vase full of roses, dandelions, and of course, the one daisy, whose stem was too short to touch the water. Rodney had his arms on the table, supporting his head.

"A better question would be," Rodney said, still buoyed, "what's it not doing on the corner of every block?"

"Oh, that's a terrible idea," Miles said, "even if you wrongly assume demand wouldn't inflate to an unsustainable rate, you'd still have to compete with all of them at once, get better employees, somehow find original marketing, not to mention all the lawsuits you'd avoid every time you want to string up a disco ball."

"I like disco balls!" Rodney said. "I had one in my room for a few years, but it broke."

Miles tilted his head. "Did it fall?"

"No, well, not exactly," Rodney became nervous. "There was this fly that flew past my ear really loudly, so I went to kill it, but the only thing I had close by was my hand vacuum...."

Silence.

"So you're a real busy guy, huh?" Rodney asked. "That's pretty cool. Can you tell me about that?"

"Lead inventor for Wyred, Inc.," Miles said, straightening up confidently, Rodney bursting with interest. "Eighty two percent success rate in presentation and survey analysis, and just recently, I invented the self automated transportation transactional system. My Social Credit is se-...wait, hang on." He opened up his Pod, swiping through the holograms, until the number ascended from it. "Seven thousand two hundred thirty six, though I fully expect it to be up by next week. I actually had an off day today, so sorry if it's not that impressive. Oh, that reminds me, do you happen to have any contact with the copper apparatus of this place? I need to speak with the...."

There was a pause as Miles' voice trailed off, unable to make out his sentences to the confused face in front of him.

"You listening?" Miles asked. "I'm sorry, are you another Tier Two? I should've asked first." Rodney shook his head. "Look, I had a bit of a fallout with my Social Credit, I swear, but-"

"Oh, buddy, I don't care about that," Rodney said. "I don't even remember what mine is. It must've been a thousand years since I've looked at it."

"You don't keep track of your Social Credit?" Miles asked, baffled. "Is..._is this a joke?_How are you supposed to ensure your connections are staying pure? How do you determine the quality of your work?"

"By sitting on my ass and answering calls," Rodney smiled, "trust me, I'm a natural."

Miles paused. "Is that...are you being snarky to me?" fighting the urge to instead say that's no way to speak to a Tier Two.

"No, it's just my sense of humor," Rodney said, "but hang on, let me pull it up."

Though he opened up his Pod anyway to check. On the third swipe, the number "487" poked up from the base, and Miles physically cringed upon looking at it. His head whirled around the cafe to check if anybody was looking.

Jesus, did he kill someone? He was almost afraid to say it out loud, though a second thought silenced him anyway.

"Huh," Rodney said. "That's okay, I guess."

"Okay?" Miles asked. "That's garbage. I can't even offer you connections from my lowest ranked jobs."

"What?" Rodney asked.

"I took one look at that and knew you had to be a Tier Five," Miles said. "How long have you been like that?"

"Since this morning."

"Since this morning. And you wanted to get me food at a restaurant?"

"Yep."

"Did you miss the sign out there that said 'three-time award winning aesthetics'?"

"Nope."

"What makes you think you can afford to spend any money here? Why would you want to do something so stupid? How are you not freaking out right now?"

"I did, and then I got bored, and now I'm here, because I want to hang out with the good looking fancy lynx I ran into this afternoon."

Miles opened up his mouth, but nothing came out. Still with a skeptical scowl across his face, he locked his hands together and looked around the room like he was imagining himself pacing about.

"You're very kind," Miles said. "I'm sorry for that outburst."

"It's nothing," Rodney said. "I tend to not judge people."

Miles suddenly looked around nervously, then scrambled to his Pod and swiped through the holograms again. When he saw the same four-digit number as before, he let out a sigh and closed it back.

"What was that all about?" Rodney asked.

"Nothing," Miles said. "I'm sorry, that was very unprofessional of me."

"Are you worried people are judging you?" Rodney asked. "Because I don't think most people look around searching for a rich guy to slip up. Most people I talk to here are a lot more interested in the next Uquaria Pageant so we can stuff our faces with peace burgers and completely forget about the work we just did."

"That's exactly the problem I work with," Miles breathed disappointingly, losing hope in the raccoon again. "Maybe this was a mistake. I'm starting to forget why I came here in the first place."

"A little brain food wouldn't hurt," Rodney said. "Oh, speak of the devil!"

They thanked the thin, orange cat who brought the wrapped up sandwiches. Rodney did a weird sort of salute to him as he walked away. As they both unwrapped their food, they had separate reactions of wide eyed hunger and total confusion.

"Oh...what?" Miles said. "Did they really cut parts of the bun out to make a...peace sign?"

"Yeah," Rodney said, his considerably thicker peace burger held straight up to his mouth. "What's the deal?"

"The ketchup and mustard's all gooey and seeping through the holes," Miles said. "It's sol...soggy, I don't even know how to hold this. Couldn't they have just branded it on top?"

"Naaaah, man, that's not a part of the experience!" Rodney said. "The sauce on your fingers while you eat is like you're giving up part of your _sanitation_to enjoy a delicious, tasty meal!"

"Not exactly a noble sacrifice," Miles said, leaning far away from his suit to take a bite, perked his eyebrows up. "Not bad." Swallowing, he dabbed his lips with a napkin. "So, uh, you've been to this place a lot, right? You know anybody who works here?"

"I know the big cheese, man," Rodney said, "his name's Jude. Super groovy name."

"Yeah?"

"He was telling me about how these burgers, before they started using beets, came from the flesh of feral cows."

"Are you...oh god. That's unheard of."

"That's what I said, man! It's wicked! In a bad way. They used to do it by the thousands all the time, and people protested against it for so long, which is wild 'cause that never happens anymore, until someone came along and was like, 'why don't we not do this?' Bunch of crazy stuff happened and now we've got all these burgers made out of beets and stuff, and it tastes just like the same thing. And then all the crazy, non-conformist cafes started dishing them out 'til they figured there was no reason to kill any cows."

Miles nodded, visually interested. "Impressive. Good for their branding, too. Otherwise, that would've completely defeated the purpose of peace."

Rodney laughed a little louder than he intended, and Miles stopped, frozen like a deer.

"What?" he asked, taken aback. "Did I say something?"

"No, no, it's just funny," Rodney said, wiping his fingers on the napkin before dragging them through his mini-fro, "I mentioned revolutionary protests and thousands of cows dying and the first thing you said was, 'man, that sounds like a really shitty brand!'"

Miles was confused -- almost offended, but as he thought about it, he started to giggle at himself. The longer he looked at his table mate practically convulsing in laughter at the table, the more he found himself joining in, until he had to put the burger down on the table to not outright crush it. At that point, they were so loud that it started spreading, making adjacent customers laugh at a joke they never heard. When they calmed down, tears in their eyes, Rodney found himself once again lost in each other's gaze.

Miles breathed. "You know, you really messed up your hair."

Rodney shook his head dismissively. Without thinking, Miles brought his hand to his head and began to smooth out the wisps of hair; suddenly realizing what he was doing, he drew his arm back and blushed, going back to eating the burger instead while his mind raced for another conversation starter. Even so, Rodney didn't seem to mind.

"Sorry about that," Miles grumbled. "I just thought I'd...I didn't bring a comb with me."

"You're cute," Rodney said, confusing Miles.

"Pardon?" he asked.

Rodney said, "Yeah, just the way you make jokes. I don't get responses like that. You're funny."

Miles cracked out a smile, now understanding what he meant, but as soon as he did, he saw the raccoon flinch.

"Oh no!" Rodney gasped. "Your suit!"

Miles gasped with him and grabbed at a filthy napkin, trying to dab away at the ketchup stain that had somehow squeezed onto the sports coat, but to no avail. There was still a prominent dark spot that stuck out as plain as a bullet hole, and it bled into a web of dread in the lynx's heart.

"Oh, bollocks," he said.

"That's a nice suit, too," Rodney said. "I hope you can get that fixed."

"Yeah, I think I...." Miles folded the napkin further and further to use up every wedge.

"Can you get it fixed?"

"It's not about the suit," Miles mumbled, "it's about what you said. Nothing bad, I've just never heard someone say that to me before."

"Well, I'll have you know I am a connoisseur of saying things," Rodney winked, getting Miles to snicker. "I had a dream growing up that I'd spend a lunchtime with everybody in Uquaria at least once, every single day, until I've met absolutely everybody inside and out."

"Really? Why?"

"I was just interested! I don't need a reason, that's what I thought. I said, 'Uquaria's big, but not mega big, and there's a bajillion people I still wanna hang with,'" Rodney said, getting visibly self conscious with each word, "but...you know, I got a little older, and I got a little money, things happened...mostly they stayed the same...and all of a sudden I'm thirty-six and hardly leave my house."

"What..." Miles said. "I don't understand. You don't go outside? No handshaking? That's a lot of talking heads to miss out on. Do you just not get the steps?"

"Miles, it's...," Rodney sighed, "it's not about that. It's just...well, I don't know. At some point, I just stopped being interested. And then I ran into you, and I really liked your suit, and there was something about you that just struck me."

A long period of silence came as Miles traced his eyes across the room, contemplating how nothing in the entire day could have prepared him for someone like this. And when he looked back to his partner, he seemed to look at the pain of anticipation seeping through him.

Miles gulped. "I'm sorry...it's nothing against you or anything, I'm just a bit distracted..."

"Well, what's wrong?"

"Just didn't expect today to go like this."

"How does that make you feel?"

"Good. Really good."

"Good thing."

"You're really smart."

"Really?"

"Just...you know a lot of things that I don't."

"Ah, so I'm not smart? Bummer."

Miles snickered. "Rodney...."

...

"Thanks for being here," he finished.

"Glad I could be here, too," Rodney said, then picked up the burger. "Sorry for getting sentimental earlier. This burger's just too good, it got to me, you know?"

Miles giggled. "I know."

They chowed down on the rest of their meals, periodically looking at each other and giving genuine smiles. It was the first time in forever that Miles had forgotten about his schedule, and the first time Rodney had forgotten he was no longer at a job. It's amazing how much life let up when two hearts beat in unison, daring not to speak a word. The same orange cat waiter came around with a tie dye, rectangular Pod out to take the transaction. Rodney nodded and held up his Pod.

"No, no, no," Miles insisted, "Rodney, please. I've got this."

Miles then brought his own Pod out, pressed the button on top and exchanged all the credits he needed to the holder. The waiter told them to have a good day, and the duo promptly exited the store. As they walked out, a dark cyan was across the sky painted with see-through cirrus clouds over it. The sight of it loomed like a shadow to the point where Miles couldn't look away.

"Wanna go to my place?" Rodney asked, and Miles looked over to his side.

Miles eyebrow raised. "That's weird."

"Huh?"

"I was going to ask the same thing."

"Oh. Groovy!"

"How'd you read my mind like that?"

"I just looked into your ear until I saw it."

"Heh...well, in that case, can you guess the next thing I'm going to say?"

He shrugged and asked, "You wanna hold hands?"

Miles stopped, then paused, nodding his head slowly, but didn't say anything. Rodney's smile crept across his face like a caterpillar under it shined like a beacon over his face. He spread his hand out over Miles' left and looked at him intently.

"I won't judge you for it."

"Yeah," Miles said, smiling as well, lacing his fingers. As he felt something wet, he pulled away; confused, Rodney looked at his hand.

"Oh!" he laughed awkwardly. "Just some ketchup." He pinched his suit around the sauce and wiped it off just as quickly as he came to his senses, now a tad embarrassed of the ugly red mark. "Funny. Now I look just like you!"

All hesitation dissolved, they took each other's hands and walked down the sidewalk in silence, occasionally cutting eyes to each other, drunkenly smiling like somebody had spiked their meals, or the heat of the moment had finally got to their heads.