Portals - Chapter 2
Portals
by Rune
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Chapter 2
Still nothing but plot. Blame the intellectual side of my brain: I can't help but work out the technical aspects of any setting I come up with, nor am I comfortable creating characters without any depth. Though, slowly building up tension makes for more arousal when the sex scenes finally come. At least it does for me. ~_^
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He clutched the metal pole as the train began its long decelleration. It had begun as a subway, but out in the industrial outskirts of the city, where there was space for it and everything was utilitarian, it popped out of the ground, its cement and metal mag-lev trough running arrow straight.
In the golden dawnlight, the boxy factory complexes with their stacks of assembly line floors, and the recycling centers with their labyrinths of tanks and piping, had given way to increasingly strange experimental facilities with towers reaching into the clouds, mountanous parabolic curves and nested rings. The experiments sometimes went wrong, which was why they were so far away from populated areas.
The robotics and biotechnology research buildings resembled conventional factories and warehouses... and it was one of these that was to be his new home for the next week.
The other passengers were all business, their bodies tailored to exactly what was needed for their jobs. Some were humans in their original, ugly furless form with no obvious bioengineering or cyberization. Others had utilitarian cyberization with robotic limbs, lense eyes, and polished metal and plastic tubes meshing with their flesh. A few were so heavily cyberized they looked like humanoid robots at first glance.
The rest were everyday people going to work: bear and racoon mechanics in blue or tan overalls, uniformed wolf and scaley security guards, lab-coated felines and avians with holomenus of research articles moving with them in perfect formation like fighter squadrons, pierced, fur-dyed and attractively dressed rodent and fox office workers... he still thought of himself as one of them...
It wasn't fair, he glared... jealous venom in his crimson eyes, softened by sad longing...
Why him? He knew layoffs might as well have been random, but he still couldn't help but wonder why he couldn't have kept his job and the axe landed on one of his coworkers... Should he have worked harder? Volunteered to work overtime on weekends? Had someone sabotaged him by making accusations to their boss? Was it all just seniority? Or all just connections he...
Finally, the train came to a stop at a cement station. As the doors squeaked open, he became part of a flow of bodies out the car, the morning air cool against the kneefur exposed by the holes in his black pants, and even colder on his furless tail. People exploded in all directions in a flurry of paws padding across rough cement, boots stomping up down steps, and metal legs clanking towards hovering buses and trucks.
Overhead, surreal parabolas of spindly high-strength alloys supported the train station's transparent ceiling, its curves shining in the sunrise. Back the way the train had come, rose the misty blue silhouettes of the mountainous megascrapers of the city center, sprouting even taller stratotowers lost in the clouds above the downtowns of each city district. Factories and industrial research facilities dotted the weedy fields outside the city like square boulders and bushes of curling metal leaves stretching off to the mountains... they surrounded the station, stretching off in all directions. There was no sense of scale to the cityscape, and though each industrial building was enormous, they seemed more like metal crates rolling off a nearby blue hill.
One of them, somewhere, was Andrea Technologies.
Where was Andrea Technologies?
The email had said to board a corp bus. Where was it?
His gaze darted around the flow of people. They were slowly disappearing as they each found their respective vehicle to board, leaving just him, and a tall, powerfully-built light brown horse in the rapidly emptying platform.
The horse clopped towards him, brown eyes glancing around nervously. His bare arms were ripped with muscles: he was wearing what seemed to be a dark grey sweater with the sleeves torn off, and dirty jeans held on by a belt made from the shredded scraps of something else.
"Excuse me?" the horse started sheepishly, "Do you, do you know where Andrea..."
"Andrea Technologies?" replied Geoff, "That's what I'm looking for!"
"Oh," the horse looked down and away, "How do we find it..."
"Let's ask someone..." Geoff started towards the nearest person, an ocelot in a white lab coat strolling leisurely with colored holomenus around his head.
"Hey," he called, "Hey! Hey you!"
Finally, the ocelot paused and turned, holomenus of scientific articles and three-dimensional graphs and figures veiling his face. The blue curling logo of Andrea Technologies was on his lab coat like a badge.
Yes!
"Yeah," Geoff said confidently, "How do I get to Andrea Technologies?"
"Eh? Bus is right there," the ocelot's voice was young and female. She swept her claws at one of the waiting vehicles just down the steps, the blue logo of Andrea Technologies on its side.
His tail sank, and he could have kicked himself. He'd been looking right at it, but hadn't read the name in the logo!
"Thanks!" he forced a smile.
"Come on, it's this way," he said the the horse, and they hurried down the steps, the fear of missing the bus in them.
Some of the other corps' hovering trucks and buses were already speeding away with humming drives over the weedy fields. As Geoff's paws entered the bus and climbed up its rubbery steps, he saw the driver was a wild-furred otter in a faded blue uniform, wearing a necklace beaded with bits of high-tech trash. She eyed them sadly.
They passed more lab-coated researchers, uniformed security, tattooed and pierced office workers, and found plastic bucket seats towards the back. They were hard and cool against his bare, furless tail. The interior was all done in the same faded blue as the company logo and uniforms.
The bus remained still for several minutes, until finally the lab-coated ocelot stepped up inside, transparent research articles moving in formation with her.
"G'mornin, Miss Spotsman," said the otter driver.
"Mornin," she mumbled, "God! I can't wait to get some coffee-eee..." she yawned as she sat down next to a lab-coated fox.
The driver shot a glance back, then the bus's hum increased in pitch and volume as they began to turn out of the line of vehicles...
"Wait!"
A grey anthro form darted past the windows and a paw grabbed the metal handle just inside the door. The breathless wolf climbed aboard before the bus came to a stop, his paws sprawling out on the ribbed rubbery floor and digging claws in for maximum grip.
"I'm ok... Andrea Technolgy, right?" he panted.
"Yup, this's the bus t'Andrea Technology," said the driver, "Is that ever'one?"
"Yeah... keep going, 'less someone else got lost, eh... other than me."
The muscular wolf's toned legs and arms were bare. His khaki shorts looked new, but the T-shirt clinging tightly to his chest was so threadbare he might as well not have been wearing a shirt at all.
As the bus began warbling over the weedy field towards a white windowless building, the grey wolf strode down to where Geoff and the horse were sitting.
"Fresh meat", "Yeah, nice to see 'em start out healthy, eh?" a pair of scientists said softly. If anyone else heard them say that, they didn't let on.
"Name's Louis, but you can call me Lou," he said as he plopped in a seat next to Geoff and the horse.
"Geoff."
"Jeff?" asked the wolf.
"Ge-off, but Jeff is ok," he nodded. Some people at the office could never pronounce his first name and had given him that nickname too.
"You?" Lou asked the horse.
"Rin," he said.
"Rin..."
The horse nodded.
Rin the horse. Lou the wolf.
Whatever lay ahead, they were in for it together.
"Man, I went all the way to the other end of the station," explained Lou, "Almost boarded the wrong bus, eh, but then the driver pointed me in the right direction."
The building slowly grew ahead, looming like a white monolith. Out in the industrial fields, there was nothing to give any sense of scale, and the building grew to a surprising size, then kept growing with seemingly no end.
The bus finally warbled to a stop in front of a tall metal mesh fence.
A gate slid open, then closed behind them.
The next mesh fence had a guardhouse with a uniformed brown wolf at eye level with the driver. He spoke with the otter for a moment, then that fence opened on a cement parking lot.
The warbling bus swung in front of a side entrance to the building, and stopped in mid-air. The employees began flowing towards the front of the bus and spilling out.
Geoff and the others followed and stepped out onto the smooth cement. The white monolith rose like a towering wall, stretching further horizontally than it did vertically. Dull grey drone disks hovered overhead, while doglike guard bots wandered about the ground, the lenses of guns where they should have had heads.
The place was like a fortress. Or a prison.
He trembled.
They joined the general flow of people into a broad doorway set into the white cliff. On either side, bare but non-anatomic draconic guards stood at attention, their large bodies towering over them. Biological robots, he realized. Any front door could scan biometric signatures and allow only specific people inside; but wetware brains were generally better than computers at spotting threats and reacting to unexpected problems.
They padded down a softly lit white corridor, the floor a hard, glossy plastic that had surprising grip despite its seemingly smooth surface, and yielded just enough underpaw to be comfortable. Even Rin's hooves didn't clop as loud as they would have on a normal surface. Cameras swivelled at them as Lou strutted confidently, following the general shuffle forward as if he was just another employee, while Rin clicked forward in spurts, looking about hesitantly.
Finally, they came to a traffic jam at a vertical scanning ring flanked by pair of canine guards in dull blue uniforms, with cameras like flies on the walls around them. Many of the employees greeted them like old friends, and were waved through quickly. Geoff and the others they scanned more carefully.
"Empty your pockets," said the stern-faced doberman.
"I don't have anything..." Geoff felt his cheeks redden. They were sure to see it under his white fur.
"Really?" the bulldog raised an eyebrow.
"Not a friggin thing," Geoff said.
They turned out the pockets of his dirty black pants with holes in the knees, and the feel of someone else's paws on his clothes felt awkward.
God, how was he going to get through a medical test of a "sexual device?"
They waved him through.
Ahead was a blue desk with a fox secretary flanked by angled orderly holomenus in a matching shade of luminescent blue, as if in a bunker with a neon ceiling. His orange muzzlefur was dyed in a beautiful asymmetric tribal pattern, and he wore a marriage collar, marking him as the sub in the relationship.
"Geoffry Torla?" He said pleasantly while staring at some menu hidden by the desk.
"It's just Geoff," he felt his cheeks redden again.
"Ok, I'll need you to sign a few things... a couple waivers of liability, and a nondisclosure agreement."
Geoff nodded.
"Shiiit... aww, maaan..." Lou moaned.
He turned to see him giving up a stylish red cylindrical computer and placing it in a shallow metal bin.
"You'll get it back when you leave," explained the bulldog.
"What'll I do if I get bored?" whined Lou, "I'll go friggin crazy without my computer!"
"Sorry, corporate policy." said the bulldog, "Could be used to collect information and violate the nondisclosure agreement."
"Mister Torla?" said the fox behind him.
He turned towards the desk and the fox handed him 3 transparent blue holomenus, all bearing the logo of Andrea Technologies.
"Sign those, please."
Knowing all-too-well what a corp was capable of doing even to its own employees, he unfolded each holomenu and spread the pages around him in 3 arcs, reading them carefully. Everything seemed to be standard language, but he had to be sure.
Lou walked up to the desk, his stride a bit deflated.
"Louis Nord?"
"You can call me Lou."
He signed his holocontractss without reading them much at all.
"Down the hall, third door on the left, follow the blue holoarrow."
"You can't smoke all that during a medical test!" insisted the doberman, "Fucks up the results."
Rin had placed a lighter and a full pack of mixed smokes in his metal bin: faded green-tipped marijuana, soft red-tipped meth, indigo-tipped peyote, and even yellowish-tipped tobacco. He frowned and looked at the floor in shame as the guards let him pass.
Geoff returned to the holomenus.
...couldn't sue if the medical test injured or crippled him.
...nor could his family sue if he was left vegetative or dead.
...the corp could refuse an autopsy to keep what was tested a secret.
He shivered.
...live or die, he had to keep silent the rest of his life about what they did to him. The cyberlink in his brain couldn't be used to forward memories of what he experienced, and the test would even be kept off the medical history of his biometric signature.
It was standard language, but it gave the corp all the control it could ever want.
Growl...
His stomach spurred him on.
He signed the holocontract.
So did a certain Rin Bishigami.
"Down the hall, 3rd door on the left, follow the blue holoarrow."