FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"Okay, this one's hard to find." He pointed a thumb over his shoulder. "The best way to find this street is to remember to make a right turn where that tavern on the corner is; that's the only street in this neighborhood where you can get to most of the other streets."

Clark nodded, his expression a mixture of boredom and apprehension. Jack figured the guy would rather be getting smashed with his beer-drinking buddies. He couldn't blame him, in a way; there were things Jack would prefer to be doing right now, particularly with Corona, though none of them involved booze and only some of them involved keeping their clothes on.

"Anyway, take a look at those addresses there." Jack pointed at the houses on the right. "Most streets have the house numbers increasing in one direction and decreasing in the other, right?"

"They do?" Clark blinked. "I never noticed that before."

Jack glanced at him, wondering if--and hoping--he was just joking around, but the look on his face was completely serious. Jack suppressed a groan. "Anyway, this area is all screwed up. Those houses over there go up, down, and up again." He pointed and counted off the numbers. "The first one is 506, then the others are 516, 522, 518, 534, and so on. The one we're looking for is 518; it's that dark green duplex right there."

"Duplex? I only see one door in front."

"The other door is on the side." Jack parked in front of the house and shut off the engine. "This is one of the really old parts of the city that were here before the corporations bought everything. The streets and addresses sometimes didn't make sense, and neither did the way the houses were built. The companies made the areas they reconstructed nice and orderly, but the places they left alone haven't changed much since the old days."

Jack got out of the car and started recording as he walked up to the front door, carrying the delivery box in his left hand and keeping his right hand under his duster, near his gun. He glanced at the OLED to remind himself of the price of the pizza, then knocked on the door. Behind him, Clark let out a soft sigh.

The door opened, revealing a guy about the same age as Clark, wearing shorts and a T-shirt with a football team's logo on the front. He had a flat-top haircut and a smirk that made Jack want to push him out in front of a speeding bus. He held his hands out and kept smirking, obviously expecting Jack to hand the pizza over before getting the money.

Why do so many people do that? Jack tried to keep his disgust from showing, but not very hard.

"Twenty-two ninety-seven," he said, somehow managing to sound calm.

The guy kept smirking and holding his hands out, and after a few seconds he finally raised an eyebrow. When Jack didn't react, he raised his hands a little higher, as if to say, "Well? Hand it over, already!"

Jack repeated the price and waited.

The guy remained silent. He kept his hands out, palms up, and stared down his nose at Jack with a smugness that made Jack want to kick the bastard's nuts up into his empty skull.

Fine, you wanna play games? I can do this all night. Jack stared right back and remained motionless.

After a long moment, the prick finally looked over his shoulder and shouted at someone else in the room. "Hey, this guy is fuckin' with me about the pizza!"

Jack raised one eyebrow. How'd you like it if I shove this pizza right up your bloated ass?

Prick turned back around and dug some cash out of his pocket, and held out a hundred-dollar bill. Jack gnashed his teeth.

Lovely. You order one of the cheapest things we've got, and then pay with a hundred. He shook his head. "I don't have that much change."

Prick's smirk vanished and a glare took its place. "All I have is hundreds."

Jack shrugged. "We only carry fifty dollars in change. It's policy--the company's way of cutting its losses when one of us get mugged."

Prick's glare intensified and he thrust the hundred into Jack's face.

"I said, I don't have that much change," Jack said through clenched teeth.

"Just give me my fuckin' pizza!"

"Not when you talk to me that way," Jack snarled. He turned and walked back to Cthulhu.

"Hey! Hey, asshole! Get back here!"

Jack heard footsteps running toward him.

"Gimme my fuckin' pizza, you little shit!"

Jack started to turn--but then Prick grabbed his arm and yanked him around. A burst of anger surged through Jack and he lashed out with his leg, sweeping Prick's feet out from under him. Prick landed on his fat ass and squealed like a little girl.

Jack heard more running footsteps inside the house, and looked at the doorway in time to see a skinny, dark-haired guy charge down the stairs with a baseball bat held over his head. Jack snorted, whipped his Glock out and aimed it at Skinny Prick. Skinny Prick stopped in his tracks and his eyes almost popped out of his skull.

"Drop it," Jack snapped, and Skinny Prick let the bat fall to the ground. "Now, go back inside."

Skinny Prick backpedaled and tripped on the stairs. Somehow, he managed to stay upright long enough to get back inside.

"Ohmigod!" Clark blurted.

Prick stared at the gun, trembling, and crab-walked toward the stairs. Jack kept an eye on him as he went back to Cthulhu.

"Oh shit," Clark mumbled, staring at Jack's gun. "Oh crap oh Jesus oh shit oh shit oh shit--"

"Oh, stop whining and get back in the car." Jack got in and waited for Clark to join him, returned the gun to his shoulder holster and roared off down the street. "In case you're wondering, I have a permit for the gun."

"Sure. Okay."

"And I have a damn good reason for carrying it. I've lost count of the number of times I've almost been mugged. It doesn't happen as often now that they know I'll put twelve-millimeter rounds in both of their ass cheeks if they fuck with me."

Clark merely nodded, looking numb. After staring out the windshield for a long moment, he mumbled, "I really need to pee."

#

What the hell's wrong with me? Taura leaned back in her chair and sighed. She hadn't been able to keep her mind on her work all evening, and she couldn't figure out why. She wasn't tired, or anything. But she couldn't stay focused, whatever the reason.

She shrugged and saved the video she'd been editing, stood and stretched. Her hands touched the ceiling and she moved her arms into a horizontal position until she'd finished. She wasn't quite as tall as Corona, yet she still had to duck when walking through doorways to avoid whacking her horns.

Maybe if the people running Biotek hadn't started off with a "bigger is better" policy, Corona and I would've been closer to human size, like later "models" are now. But then, she reminded herself, she and Corrie could've turned out a lot more screwed-up than they already were. The earliest genetic experiments had produced some real monstrosities. Compared to some of the things Biotek and other corporations had brought to life, being a seven-foot-tall, bipedal cow wasn't really that bad.

She sighed and walked into the kitchen to make a cup of tea.

Oops, forgot to close the curtains. She'd been so absorbed in the stuff Jack had recorded yesterday that she'd lost track of the time. In a way, it was a pity that tonight was Jack's last night on his pizza-delivery job. The videos of his customers had certainly been entertaining.

She glanced at her watch; he should be coming home soon.

That made her smile. She enjoyed having him around, though she ended up feeling like a fifth wheel whenever he and Corona started getting affectionate with each other.

She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window as she reached out to close the curtain. She paused for a moment, pondering her face as she often did when she saw herself in a reflective surface. Humans usually described her as a minotaur, or sometimes tauren; accurate enough, since she did have many features that were similar to the mythological creature. She assumed that some of the geneticists had been inspired by that myth, no doubt expecting to create fierce, powerful soldiers for the military.

Which was what they had gotten, in most cases--but not Taura. She could fight as competently as any other chimera, but she'd always preferred to work with her mind instead. That had prompted her to delve into electronics and programming, writing code and building electronic gadgets from scratch.

That had nearly sealed her fate at Biotek. The military wasn't about to pay ungodly amounts of money for an egghead created in a lab when they could hire any number of humans for a fraction of the cost. Biotek had tried to sell her to the military, and then to anyone who might've had a use for a bioengineered soldier, for almost two years before they finally decided to put her down. Luckily, the government had ordered Biotek to halt production and release the chimeras they'd already created mere hours before her termination was scheduled. The other genetic-engineering companies had received the same order, which they'd followed grudgingly.

Some chimeras had chosen to join the military anyway. And why not? Fighting was all they really understood.

Not Taura. Once she'd gotten her first taste of freedom, there was no way in hell she would give it up.

She sighed and pulled the curtain over her reflection. Corona had a sort of exotic beauty and a vivacious personality, so it was no surprise that Jack had fallen for her. Taura, on the other hand...

I just look like a cow. She'd been exposed to human standards of beauty all her life and had learned to see herself as they saw her. So many people either thought she was ugly or assumed that she was a dimwit based on her bovine appearance. Most of the time she could shrug it off, but occasionally it got under her skin.

She filled the teapot with water and put it on the burner, then shook her head. It wasn't like her to be so preoccupied with her appearance, yet here she was, letting it distract her to the point where she couldn't concentrate on anything else.

She growled softly. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. She turned the burner on and opened the cupboard that held the coffee and tea. She selected cinnamon, pulled one of the little bags out, and took a mug from another cupboard. She waited for the pot to heat up, filled the mug, and returned to her desk in the corner of the front room.

Her gaze settled on the gloves resting beside the keyboard, and a slight frown crossed her face. That was something else the geneticists had buggered up; each of her hands had only two oversized fingers and thumb, which made it impossible to use a keyboard designed for human hands unless she poked at it with a stylus. Before she'd acquired her deck of cards-sized omnitool, she'd used HUD goggles and a pair of input gloves that she'd made to fit her hands. Rather nifty, she liked to think, but even though her omnitool had made it obsolete, it annoyed her that she'd needed to create this setup in the first place.

I really need to put those things away. I have enough reminders of my shortcomings as it is.

She grumbled and took a small sip of her tea. There was nothing she could do about her hands or anything else on her body. Nothing she could afford, at least.

I could try a few minor cosmetic changes that don't involve expensive, risky medical procedures. She glanced down at her loose T-shirt and cargo pants and noticed how plain and unflattering they were. Maybe she could try dressing more provocatively like Corona usually did--when Corrie bothered wearing clothes at all. Taura would never really be attractive, but maybe showing a little more skin would at least distract people from her more inhuman features. If nothing else, it might help her feel a little better about herself.

Or, more likely, it would have the exact opposite effect.

What the hell? Why am I so obsessed with this, all of a sudden? You are what you are. Just accept it and move on. And get back to work! Jack could sell the raw footage he'd recorded on his deliveries, but then Otto or Shakira would have to edit it, and the clips tended to fetch a higher price when they arrived polished and ready for uploading.

She took another sip of her tea, put the cup down on the desk and reached into the holofield projected by the omnitool. The sooner she finished editing these clips, the sooner Jack could sell them, and the sooner Taura could focus on finding a new gig for herself. Maybe if she kept busy, it would keep her mind off all the little things that had been bugging her lately.

The sound of the TARDIS materializing suddenly came from the omnitool, indicating an incoming phone call. She twitched and yelped. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and shook her head. When she'd regained her composure, she reached into the holofield and touched the phone icon. Corona's cell number popped up. Taura smiled. As interruptions went, this was a most welcome one.

"Hello, Corona. What's up?"

"Hi. I just landed a gig, and was wondering if you could help out with it."

"Sure. What do you need?"

"Just some info on a stalker. I'm scanning photo of him now; I'll send it to you in a sec. He's a twisted little bastard, from what I've been told."

"Okay." Taura opened a new window in her holofield and set the omnitool to extract the file from the desktop computer. She picked up her tea, leaned back and sipped. It was cooler now, so she took a longer drink. A few seconds later, Corona started the file transfer.

When it completed, Taura moved her mug from one hand to the other, touched an icon to display the image, and studied it for a moment.

"Hmm. Yeah, I can tell already that this guy is a little off. What's his name?"

"Patrick Henderson."

"Okay, I'll get right on it." Taura took one more sip and put the mug down, reached into the holofield and tapped another icon. "First thing to check is the police records and see if he's been arrested for stalking anyone else."

"Just what I was about to suggest." Corona giggled, and Taura couldn't help laughing softly as her friend's infectious affability began to dissipate the dark cloud that had been hovering over her all evening.

Taura began typing on her ghostly keyboard, entering the photo into several law-enforcement databases and searching for a match. She found one a few seconds later.

"Here he is. He's had a number of complaints filed against him, but it never went any farther than that. He hasn't been convicted of anything, or even formally charged, but the police have 'talked to him' for remarks he's made to women, attempts to grope them, and so on. He's also been caught downloading porn at work, and has been witnessed masturbating in public restrooms." She read on a bit farther and grimaced. "According to the reports about the porn downloading, he's into some rather...odd material."

"Do I wanna know?"

"Well, among the gems he was caught downloading were a number of entries in the Interspecies Creampie Gangbang series, and clips from another one titled Need for Seed. And it goes downhill from there. He seems to enjoy hentai, bondage and rape fantasies, incest and guro, among other things."

"Guro. Fuckin' hell."

"Yeah." Taura shook her head at the text in her holofield. "Several of the complaints cited pictures and erotic fiction which showed the victims enjoying being raped." She shuddered.

"Ah, shit!" Corona sighed. "Right. Okay, I'm definitely gonna have a little heart-to-heart with this bastard." She paused, then added, "I have an idea. I gotta call Jack and see if he can meet me here. If he can record this guy harassing my clients, it'll be just what they need to put him away."

Taura smiled. "Excellent idea."

"Thanks for your help, Taura."

"My pleasure."

"See you soon." Corona giggled and hung up.

Taura smiled again and drank some more tea, then pushed Henderson's file aside and pulled the current video clip forward.

"Okay, time to get back to work," she muttered as she resumed playback on the latest clip she'd been watching. The guy in the video was monstrously obese and was wearing a pair of very tight briefs--and nothing else. Taura grimaced. His breasts are bigger than mine!

"Uh...how ya doin'?" Jack's voice said, sounding tinny because of the cheap microphone he'd clipped under the collar of his black duster.

"Good, good. You?"

"Could be worse. I think. Forty-nine ninety-seven, please."

"Just a minute, I gotta get my wallet." The nearly naked man turned and walked--no, not exactly walked, Taura realized; more like pranced--to the coffee table and picked up the wallet, jutting his enormous hindquarters directly toward Jack as he did so.

"Poor Jack," Taura said under her breath. I'll never understand how he got through each day without snapping like a twig. She watched the rest of the clip and chopped off the bit at the end, Jack having kept recording in case anything weird happened on the way to his car. She saved a backup and added the file to the folder of videos she'd already finished, and then she moved on to the next one.

The sooner she got through this freakshow, the better.

#

"Oh, Christ," Jack growled after looking at the address on the next delivery box.

"What's wrong?" Clark stared at him, eyes wide, clearly terrified of anything that was bad enough to shake Jack up.

"Our next delivery." Jack sighed. "It's the loan sharks who loaned me the money for my eyes."

Clark blinked. "You went to a loan shark?"

"Didn't have any choice. I tried to get a loan from my own bank first, but they turned me down because I don't make enough money. How's that for a kick in the teeth? My own bank--the same bank my family has used for more than fifty years--turned me down. And so did every other bank and credit union I applied at. Finally, I found a loan company that was willing to give me the money I needed, but now they harass me like you wouldn't believe if my payment is two minutes late." He shrugged. "They're not technically loan sharks, but they sure as hell act like they are."

"Well, I suppose you should've kept your real eyes until you could afford it on your own."

"I didn't get these for shits and giggles." Jack gave him the finger. "I lost my eyes not long after starting on this job--I got mugged one night, bastard hosed me with a neurotoxin mace and my eyes were pretty much destroyed. Company insurance got me a pair of cheap-ass eyes that didn't work half the time, so I had to find some better ones."

"Oh." Clark looked away and scratched at his cheek in an attempt to hide his blush.

"Yeah, 'oh.'" Jack shrugged and eased Cthulhu into the parking lot in front of On the Spot Loans, Inc. It was a small office sandwiched between several other businesses that moved in and out every few months, none of them surviving long in the stranglehold the major corporations had on the city. In this case, maybe it wasn't a bad thing; with luck, these scumbags would go bankrupt soon.

Jack sighed and got out. "Let's get this over with."

"Late on one of your payments?" Clark looked bemused, as if he couldn't understand the concept of anyone not having enough money to pay all their bills.

Jack grumbled under his breath. "I get my paycheck on Thursday; I'll pay 'em then. Can't do it before that." He strode across the lot and through the front doors. The place had several desks in the area near the doors, and these were surrounded by a couple dozen cubicles. Jack glanced at the box's screen again and saw that whoever had ordered the pizza hadn't left a name. He shrugged and headed for the nearest desk.

A blond woman looked up from whatever she was typing and gave him a plastic smile. "Can I help you?"

"Know who ordered this?"

"What is it?"

Well, let's see, I'm carrying a box with a pizza company logo on it, the guy standing next to me has the same logo on his shirt and hat...so what the hell do you think it is?

"It's a pizza," he said, speaking as if to a child.

"Oh! Well, it was probably Lane." She pointed to a clean-cut young man at another desk. He was wearing a white shirt and a tie and had the same air of superiority that Jack had come to know and despise over the last few years.

Jack walked across the room. The guy was on the phone, grinning and laughing as he talked with someone about the cruise he was planning. Jack cleared his throat and Lane nodded absently and held up his index finger, as if to say, "Just a moment." Jack sighed and waited.

"Yeah," Lane said, nodding even though the phone wasn't a video-capable model. "Yeah, we're getting two weeks on the ship for only twenty thousand dollars. Yeah, great deal, huh?"

Only twenty thousand? Jack's lips curled in disgust. He kept waiting several more minutes, growing more and more pissed, until Lane finally finished the conversation and hung up.

"Okay, how much is it?"

Right down to business. Not even an insincere "sorry to keep you waiting." Jack looked at the screen again and said, "Forty-nine ninety-five."

"Wow, that's an awful lot just for a pizza."

Jack struggled to prevent his mouth from dropping open. He stared at Lane and waited.

Finally, Lane dug his wallet out and handed Jack a fifty. Jack took the pizza out of the box and placed it on the desk, and reached into his pocket to dig out the change. Lane snapped his fingers twice and held out his hand.

"Change!"

"Yes, I know." Jack sighed and shook his head. "As you can see, I was already getting your change out." He took a nickel out of the handful of coins and dropped it onto the desk. "Here's your five cents. Have a nice evening." He turned toward the door.

"Hey," Lane said, "you're Jack Hammer, aren't you?"

Jack growled softly, a habit he'd picked up from Corona without really realizing it, and Clark took a step back. Jack turned to face Lane and waited.

"You know, I was looking at your file today." Lane smirked. "Your latest payment is overdue."

"The due date came before I get my paycheck. I'll have it on Thursday, and send you the payment then."

"A late payment is a late payment." Lane shrugged and chuckled, and the smugness oozing from every pore made Jack want to pound on the guy's head hard enough to shoot his teeth out of his asshole. "A late fee will be added, of course, so be sure you pay that in addition to the monthly payment when you--"

Jack pivoted and stormed out the door before Lane could finish. He got into his car, slammed the door, sat there and simmered until Clark joined him.

"Son of a bitch can afford twenty thousand dollars for a cruise, but throws a fit if I don't give him his damned five cents fast enough." Jack shook his head. "I hope he gets hit by lightning and doesn't die." He snarled again, started the engine and eased out of the parking lot, gripping the steering wheel and gear shift to keep his hands from shaking.

Clark, wisely, kept his mouth shut.