FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

For years, I'd dreamed of becoming a pilot, navigating the inky black reaches of space. It didn't matter what I did, or who I worked for, I just wanted the freedom bought by a star ship. My dream was, unfortunately hindered by the fact that I'd pulled a C- average for the two years I had been in flight school but that wasn't even my fault. I had aced every simulation, got perfect scores on all the skill tests, but the stupid boilerplate memorization exams just royally fucked me over. Didn't matter, I was born for space, and nothing as insignificant as a poor grade report was going to hold me back. To put it nicely, my parents were... distant. To put it truthfully, they'd suffered a messy divorce that left them both wounded. Mom became distant, and sought what peace she could find in the bottom of a bottle, and I never heard from Dad, aside from the child support checks that came in the mail. It made me a little sick inside, but I lied to them both, took the money for tuition and shoved it right into a bank account. I got a job, got an apartment, and worked my ass off. Now, after four hard years of twelve hour shifts, a tiny, cramped apartment, and cheap, bland food, I was mere inches from realizing my dream.

"Alright there, uh... Mike, was it? All that's left is the christening, and we can get that done jus' as soon as you sign off."

The grizzled old bear held out a thumb scanner, and I numbly clasped it in my hand. The device beeped once it verified my thumb print, and he nodded before turning to walk down the hall.

"Thank ye for yer business."

With slightly shaking legs, I followed the gray muzzled mechanic down a hallway towards the hanger, where ships were delivered once they were ready. This was really happening. We were on the way to go christen my ship.

My ship. Just thinking those words together made me giddy with anticipation. I was hours away from freedom, and it took all my self-control to not just sprint down the hall. I had a ship, the skills to use it, and a contract with a local long distance shipping company. All I needed to do was name her, load my few meager possessions, and collect my cargo from the Geosynchronous Orbital Space Station (G.O.S.S.) Then, I could leave this backwater scrapheap behind. No regrets, no looking back. We arrived in the hanger, and the grey muzzled wolf indicated which was mine with a lone finger.

Even despite my hard work and my parents'... contribution, I hadn't been able to afford much. It was a simple freighter, a run-of-the-mill design with a thousand exactly like it already drifting through the abyss. It was built with storage space in mind, and it looked like little more than a box with anti-grav jets. It was not sleek. It was not unique. It didn't have anything at all in terms of weaponry. It was not special in any way. Regardless of all of that, she was mine, she was space worthy, and she was the most beautiful thing I had ever laid eyes on.

"Long Way Down."

"''scuse me?"

"That's her name, The Long Way Down."

"Heh. If you say so. Give us another three hours to lazar the name on, and then she's all yours. You have until sunrise tomorrow to get your kit loaded and get out of the hanger 'afore we start charging ya for taking up space. Enjoy your travels, Captain."

He gave a slightly mocking salute and turned away with a coarse laugh, already talking into his walkie talkie to arrange for the name. I watched him go, giddy with excitement before turning to sprint towards the parking lot. I'd already packed my things and canceled the lease on my apartment, all my junk was waiting in James's truck. It wouldn't take more than an hour or two for us to drive into the hanger and transfer my meager belongings from his truck to my ship.

My ship. Mine.

James was one of my few real friends, and he was the only one who cared enough about me to come see me off. He was an energetic bear who loved hard music and action movies, and his black fur was usually accented by artistic swirls of red dye. He sat in the driver's seat of his truck, hiding from the icy wind, and he honked a few times as I came sprinting up. I jumped into a hip slide across his hood and dove up into the passenger seat. While I panted to catch my breath, he jumped right in with the main question.

"Come on you crooked bastard, tell it to me straight. You're a captain now, right?"

"Fuck yea I am!"

"Hell yea!"

He punched his fist into mine, laughing at the undiluted joy he saw in face.

"Not only that, it's brand new, so I got to name her!"

"No shit? Come on man, don't leave me hanging, what's your tag?"

"I am now legally known as Captain Michael Sodolak, of the cargo vessel, Long Way Down."

"Haha! A damn good name for a damn good ship."

"Damn right!"

Five minutes of slow driving and fast music saw us to the hanger, where they were already busy adding the name on. After a questioning look towards the worker, he waved us on, and James backed his truck through the hanger and right up the loading ramp into the Down's cargo bay. We took maybe half an hour of grunting to haul my clothes and possessions into my cabin. We just stacked the boxes there; I'd have plenty of time to unpack in transit. At least, that's what I thought, but he went to one of the boxes anyways and sliced the tape off the top.

"No, man, you don't have to help me unpack, I'm grateful enough that you drove all my junk over here."

"I would agree with you, but this box isn't full of your crap. At least, not yet it isn't."

The box was marked with an odd symbol that I didn't remember drawing, and after cutting away the last of the tape, he turned with a flourish. In his hands were two dusty brown bottles of old fashioned A&W root beer, misted over with condensation.

"Shit man, are those glass bottles?!? You know that's against regulation, are you trying to get me arrested?"

"Who's gonna see? It's just you and me, on your ship, knocking back a bottle or two of the good stuff. I'll take the bottles with me, and nobody will ever know. No worries."

Anxiety and joy fought a battle over my face, but joy won; A&W was my one true weakness, especially the old fashioned kind, with real sugar. He handed one to me, frosty cold from the ice he'd packed in the box, and we cracked the tops off. We talked, laughed, and drank, reminiscing about good times together, and when the bottles went dry, he stashed them both in his voluminous coat pockets, and we kept just talking the day away. One of the workers poked his head in with a clip board and announced that the name was done. I glanced at my communications unit with surprise; two hours had passed, and it felt like no time at all. What he said next surprised me though.

"By the way, Flashpoint software just finished the alpha testing of the new A.I. they're working on. This thing is supposed to be crazy realistic, top of the line stuff."

I knew a sales pitch when I heard one, and I already was shaking my head.

"Sounds fascinating, but I'm a bit broke right now."

"That's the kicker. When I say they just finished it, I mean the data core with the software just arrived five minutes ago, it hasn't even gone through beta testing yet. They're offering it free to all new ships, so long as you give them feedback and help them iron out any bugs.

A top of the line A.I. for free? It sounded too good to be true... I didn't know what kind of "bugs" an A.I. might have, but anything that went wrong with calculations in space could easily be fatal. Still, Flashpoint was the top name in artificial intelligence...

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What the hell, you only live once.

"Sounds like a sweet deal. Load her into the mainframe!"

"Alright. You get the A.I., as well as a few mandatory hardware upgrades thrown in for free. If you don't like it after a month's time, swing by Flashpoint's HQ on planet Tejas, they'll extract it and replace it with any of their other products for only a service fee. It's a damn sweet deal if you ask me, but we're going to need a couple more hours for the installation. Why don't you and your friend go hit the town and grab a bite to eat? Trust me, once you're out in the Ink, you'll miss real food."

James clapped me on the shoulder and all but dragged me from the cabin.

"Great plan! I'll treat Mike to one last meal on the town. Buzz him when the ship is done!"

"Will do."

It wasn't like I could resist his strong hand literally dragging me, but there was a nagging sense of fate lingering about the air. I was a firm believer in the power of Impulse, and I wondered what difference a couple hours might have made for the timing of things. Ah well, I'd never find out.

---

Lunch was delicious, and James and I turned an ordinary Chinese buffet into a party house, until the manager kicked us out for causing too much of a disturbance. It was shaping up to be the best day of my life, and before I knew it, my comm unit was buzzing. I flipped it open and read aloud the text line I'd been sent over the SMS.

"The Cargo Ship 'Long Way Down' is ready for takeoff."

We double timed it back to the hangar and said our goodbyes, and I watched him vanish into the snow with bittersweet sorrow weighing down my heart. Nonetheless, I stopped by my cabin to admire myself a little in the mirror before I took off.

Captain Michael Sodolak of the cargo ship, Long Way Down. I was moderately handsome, an armadillo if you must know. I had bulky, protective armor plates on my forearms, shoulders, shins, back, and even my own natural helmet that was the source of endless "hard headed" puns. Back on my home planet, I'd had my armor permanently stained black, and I had a variety of waterproof paints that I could beg James into splashing across my shell. Currently, I had moderately spaced jagged blue slashes and arcs across all my plates, a blue counterpoint to the red swirls James had ordered me to use on him. I was lean from years of eating sparsely in an attempt to save every penny, and my muscles were decently toned from the work. I was no body builder, by any stretch of the term, but I had strength enough to defend myself and my armor made me look stronger than I really was. Perhaps even strong enough to impress a few women, though I hadn't had a real date in years. From the moment I hit eighteen, I'd poured everything into working and saving up money, so I hadn't had time for any kind of social life, much less romance.

Breck was a frozen waste of a place; there were frozen mountains everywhere except for the only moderately warm equator, so it's no surprise that Ursines had evolved there. The shocking part was that all planets capable of supporting any kind of life had the almost the exact same evolutionary pathways. Each planet had its own specific species, but all animals had evolved within the same groups of families: ursines, canines, felines, everything. In addition to the natural slew, each planet had exactly one single sentient species heavily based off of a particular animal. Well, there is one notable exception; we found one planet inhabited entirely by a rainbow coalition of hybrids, with so many different traits intermixed that it was difficult to believe they'd started as anything else. A particularly observant individual might notice that this lends almost undeniable evidence towards the idea of a single creator god. We haven't found one yet, and the spirits we did find steadfastly insist that none of them ever created anything, a fact we believe based on the point that they're all colossal idiots. If there was a grand deity at some point, it's either gone or still hiding in one of the far flung corners of the universe.

Sorry, one of the things I studied in preparation for flight school was universal biology, and I sometimes regurgitate the knowledge that they beat into my skull with an electrical mallet. Thought tangents aside, I'm five six to the top of my skull, and that's average for an Armadillo. It was also almost laughably short of the six and a half average among Bears, which was half of the other reason I hadn't had a love life to date. All known sentients were able to breed hybrids, with widely mixed results, but at the same time, most species still chose to marry at least close to their own. They just have different standards for what counts as sexy, and a midget with armor didn't qualify for most female Ursines.

I admired myself for just a moment more before I remembered that James hadn't taken his box with him on the way out. From his words, he'd hinted that there was something else in it, and I turned and walked the few steps across my cabin to peer into it. There, nestled between the condensating ice packs he'd used to keep our drinks cold, was a lazar pistol complete with a black leather hip holster. Awed by the gift, I pulled it out and slowly buckled it around my waist. It was real leather, dyed black, an extreme luxury in this day and age, and as I drew the pistol to pose in the mirror, a note fell out. I retrieved and unfolded the note, reading his words in his voice.

Dear Captain Ass Hat,

In all your planning and giddiness with becoming a space farer, you forgot the number one rule of Saturday morning holovision; any captain worth his jets has got to know how to handle a blaster. I know you won't get much chance to practice with it, but I wanted to give you something to remember me by. Next time you go on vacation, come back to Breck, and I'll teach you how to use it, all the fun tricks they don't show you in standard weapon training in high school.

Sincerely,

That one guy who will always be cooler than you are.

A.K.A. James McCarthy.

I laughed, and couldn't help the fact that my eyes misted over just a little. The sly bitch knew I wouldn't have accepted such a lavish gift, so he snuck it past me and ran away before I could reject. Clever bastard... I posed in front of the mirror and snapped a picture with my comm unit. I sent it to him with only two words in the message.

Fuck you.

The reply was almost instant, a picture of him with the largest shit-eating grin I had ever seen on him.

Love you too. Peace.

Peace.

I was torn between groaning and laughing as I stomped through a tour of my ship, heavy boots clonking along the metal walkways. It was cramped, with exactly enough room in the hall for one man to walk. The latrine, cockpit, and my rather small cabin were all located at the front of the vessel, with the rest of the room dedicated to the large cargo bay in the rear, and I poked my head in just long enough to notice that a person could comfortable play a game of tennis without running into the walls. Then, I clonked my way to the captain's chair, and took a moment to familiarize myself with the controls. Everything was, of course, standard, but the few things I didn't know how to work, the AI could, of course, help me with.

"Computer, begin voice recognition sample recording.

A cute sounding female voice answered me, though it wasn't the answer I was expecting.

"No can do. You need to confirm your identity before I start recording for voice commands."

I blinked and glanced around before I saw a thumb pad scanner like the ones on all the doors. I pressed my digit against it, and all the lights and displays lit up as the ship quietly purred to life.

"Welcome, Michael Slovacek! My name is Amanda Gladstone, but you can call me Amy! Would you like me to record your voice for speech pattern recognition purposes?"

"Yes, please, that would be wonderful."

She giggled slightly, and I couldn't help but blush just a little. Technology was advancing in leaps and bounds, and if not for the fact that I knew this was a machine talking to me, I would have sworn it was a real girl, talking over voice chat. She sounded young, perhaps a year or two younger than my twenty three. She bounded into view on the main monitor, looking unbearable happy and chipper.

"Ooohhh, so polite! It seems I have a real gentleman on board. I'll be recording everything you say for now, and after I record enough of your voice, I should be able to recognize it no problem."

3-D holograms were expensive, so I'd opted for the more traditional 2-D visual displays. Even so, when her face popped into existence on one of the screens, it looked just as lifelike as... well, as real life! The screen showed the head and shoulders of a beautifully spotless snow white husky girl, dressed in blue jeans and a flouncy pink shirt with lots of ruffles. Amy gave me a wink, and then cracked her knuckles.

"Alrighty then, Captain! What are your first orders?"

"Let's start with a quick run-down to make sure I remember what everything does, then we need to contact hanger control and request permission to take off."

"Sounds like a plan! Would you like me to give you the grand tour?

"Skip the lesson, go for the test. I know this stuff."

To my pleasure, and apparently Amy's as well, I got a solid 95% of the instruments correct, and the only ones I missed were the obscure ones that had been installed for regulation rather than practical use. I did my best to log them in my memory, but I doubted they would ever be needed.

"Okay Captain, I pronounce you fit to fly! I'm bringing up the Hangar control now."

She said it with a giggle, and I assumed that her pronouncement didn't mean anything other than friendly playfulness. After a moment or two, Control came up on the front window/projection display, and the Hangar master and I exchanged salutes.

"Long Way Down, Air Control, do you read me?"

"Air Control to Long Way Down, please proceed, over."

"Down, Control, Requesting permission to take off. Over."

"Long Way Down, you're the only ship leaving our hangar today, and overhead traffic is at a minimum. Our instruments show that you have the most current air traffic and weather data sets. We're winding back the roof for you, please stand by."

It took perhaps thirty seconds, and then they reported back

"Cargo ship Long Way Down. You are cleared for takeoff. Congratulations, and have a nice life. Over."

"Thank you Control, Down exiting hangar. Over and out."

I gently pulled back on the vertical thrusters, and the grav pads hummed to life beneath me. A quarter of the way down the throttle, there was a slight jolt as I won free of the floor. I grabbed the main controls and pivoted the craft slowly, taking note of its large rear inertia even when empty. This thing would be a beast to pilot when fully loaded.

Good. I like a challenge.

I slammed the vertical thrust all the way back and the Down all but leaped skywards. I laughed from the sheer exhilaration of it, tilted the craft back, and hit the main thrusters to help win free of gravity's tenacious pull. Higher, higher, until the blue/grey of the sky started fading towards the inky black of space. Amy giggled somewhere off to the side, and skipped her way across the assorted screens to the main display. I could actually see parts of her flashing across the other displays, as the different screens were nothing but windows to another world. Damn, but they did make these AI realistic.

"Not so fast there, Captain! Aren't you forgetting something?"

"Please, so long as it's just us, you may as well call me Mike. And no, I'm not forgetting anything; I'm just taking the long way around orbit."

She giggled, and actually blushed a little.

"Okay Mike. Anything in particular that you wanted to do before you get there?"

"Hm... I have a bunch of games and stuff on physical storage over in my cabin. What are the odds I could load them onto the ship's mainframe?"

"Do your core use a universal data plug-ins? If yes, then I guarantee I can patch something into the software to run it through my circuits. At current speed, we have two hours and thirty six minutes until you need to maneuver into the GOSS docking station. That's plenty enough time for a game or two. I'll wait here while you fetch your data core."

I had the usual blend of generic first person shooters, a few quirky puzzle games, some strategy games, and a wide selection of retro titles, reaching all the way back to the truly ancient days of the X-Station 64. I shifted out of my chair, took a step forwards and tripped flat on my muzzle before bouncing into the air for a second, softer landing.

"Oopsie... artificial gravity isn't on yet. Do you want me to activate it now, or leave it off?"

"Leave it off, I think, this is interesting."

This high up, gravity was a fraction of what it was on the surface, and I had to hop rather than stride to my cabin. Luckily, there were hand guides halfway up the walls, just below my chest, and with them I managed to get to my cabin without falling again. The boxes were easily moved in the low gravity, and I quickly found the crate stuffed with bubble wrap and one sentimentally priceless data core. It was one of the few luxuries I'd allowed myself, along with the laptop that lay in it's case on my bed. I grabbed a UDP cord and carefully made my way back to the cockpit.

Amy was still on the main screen; she was leaning over a table with a bored look on her face. I stopped, just outside of the camera range to get a better look. She had taken the hourglass loading icon and was idly flicking it over every few seconds or so, in a rather overdone imitation of the loading flash used by most computers. I laughed to see it, and hopped forwards into the cockpit. She jerked upright guiltily and blushed, table and hourglass gone instantly.

"Was that the flash loading icon?"

She blushed a little more, her cheeks going pink beneath her fur.

"Sorry! I just got so bored; I forget that bios take time for things."

"I didn't take that long, did I?"

"A frame of reference; in the time you were gone, I sent a message burst to the station to tell them were coming and ran a full background check on you, including family, job, and friends. Then, I composed a short message to each, dictating that you'd taken off safely, and informed them of your new status. That all took place in about the first twenty seconds."

I blinked, caught off guard. That was a lot of information to process, even for an A.I. It made me wonder just how good she was.

"Sorry... what do you do with your spare time then?"

"When I've accomplished all tasks you've ordered and that I can think of, I usually de-activate higher functions and go on standby, like I was when you first boarded."

"Allow me to re-phrase the question then. What do you do for fun?"

"Fun...?"

"Yea. Fun, pleasure, happiness, that sort of thing."

Her voice dropped until I could barely hear it. She glanced down and her lip quivered slightly as if she was about to cry.

"I... I don't... I'm an A.I. I don't get to have fun."

Once again, that was absolutely not what I expected.

"Amy... is there something wrong?"

She glanced up and blushed, and her voice rose back to normal levels.

"... What? Oh, no, I was just thinking."

"Are you sure?"

"It happens sometimes. I don't actually know very much about myself yet."

"You don't? How can you not know... you?"

"I'm a brand new design, remember? Back in development, they formatted my memory each change they made. Also, your ship has a completely different mainframe, it's as different from the lab computers as..." Her eyes darkened slightly, and she murmured the next words. "as you are from me." Like last time, the odd depressive spell only lasted a few moments before she looked back up and smiled. "Anyways, you're the guinea pig of sorts. If I do well and you give me a positive review, they'll copy my software directly from the ship and then start selling me to the market. That's why you have me, instead of some dull, emotionless machine."

For the last sentence, she raised her arms and did a little twirl, and I couldn't help but admire her figure. She was a looker, no doubt there. I chuckled slightly as I watched her move and set my gear down on the cabin floor.

"Well, you're doing an excellent job so far! If you got so bored waiting for me, how about a little race then? I want to see exactly how fast you are. I have about 500 gigs worth of music, games, and videos on here. I want to see you download everything into the ship's mainframe, sort it into folder by file type or function, then alphabetize the lists within. I want a 3-D shaded timer on the side of the screen to track you, and I want your fur to turn from white to black by percentage, starting at your feet and ending once you've finished the file transfer. The timer starts when the plug hits the core. Are you ready?"

As I spoke, the timer appeared on the side, and her pink, fluffy shirt was exchanged for a white tank top and black leather gloves.

"Ready, willing, and able Captain!"

"Alright... Go."

I plugged the cord into the core, and instantly her fur started to shade from soft white into a gleaming black. It travelled up her feet in a steady wave, and when it hit her jeans, they started disappearing. I watched the clothing vanish with a touch of concern, and yes, I'll admit it, foolish hope, but it resolved at her thighs, where her jeans became cut-off shorts. At the rate she was changing colors, she had to be processing at least five gigs per second, in addition to the distractions I'd given her. Damn, she was fast. Her arms were down, and the black was had just hit her fingertips when it stopped abruptly. Her hands flew to her face and she blushed so deep a crimson that I could actually see the red through her white fur.

"Amy? Is there a problem?"

"Um... Sir... The, uh... what do you want me to do with the..."

"The what?"

"The... porn..."

Reality came crashing down in a wave as I remembered the rather extensive library of erotica I'd packed away in anticipation of long nights alone. I'd completely forgotten it was there, and I joined her in a dark blush.

"I... you can leave that on the core, I.. sorry, I'd forgotten that was there."

She frowned a little, and blinked a few times as she pulled her hands away and the shock left her eyes.

"Are you sure? I don't mind... it just caught me by surprise. Really, I promise. There's more than enough data storage here, they upgraded the mainframe as part of the package."

I almost objected and told her to leave it there. Even though she was an AI, I already valued her good opinion, and I hoped I hadn't screwed it up already, but I sat there, frozen in embarrassment, until she said one more word.

"Please?"

It was spoken softly, so softly that I thought I had imagined it. Her blushed darkened further, something I wouldn't have thought possible. What would an AI want with a hundred gigabytes of porn? From that question, my mind instantly jumped to a mental image of her, naked, masturbating as she watched my porn. I knew she wasn't real but I hadn't had a girlfriend in a long time, and I couldn't prevent the inevitable thought. She opened her mouth to take it back, but I jumped the gun and cut her off.

"If you really don't mind... then yes, go ahead."

She nodded, still crimson beneath her fur, and the black wave started to climb higher again.

"Oh Amy, aren't you forgetting something?"

"What? EEK!"

The timer jumped back into existence, still ticking, and she'd added to it the time we spent in an awkward silence. Even with the unexpected handicap, she managed to transfer and sort my entire library in a fraction of the time I had thought it would take. Just for good measure, she even zipped and archived all the data on the core.

"Four minutes? A damn good time, I spent days packing this away. You should be proud."

"Thanks..."

She was panting as if she'd just finished a marathon, and she leaned over to rest her hands on her knees. More show, just for my part, but it made me wonder if A.I.'s could get tired. I logged the question away for another time, because she stood up slowly, embarrassment fading. She pulled a mirror into existence to study herself in it. In addition to the blue jean shorts, she now had on a white tank top, white fingerless gloves, and a blue bandanna that wrapped around the top of her head and between her ears. I couldn't rid myself of the mental image of her enjoying my collection, and because of that, we both spent a good minute observing her.

"Mike... do you want me to keep the black fur?"

Her voice jolted me from my thoughts; she sounded timid, shy almost. Did she care what she looked like? Did she care about whether I liked what she looked like?

"I... I don't know... It looks good on you, but I think white fits you better. Maybe you lose the gloves, but leave your fingertips black, and the tips of your ears too I think."

Her black fur snapped to white, her white tank top snapped to black, and her fur colored to show what I had requested. She seemed oddly self-conscious for a program, and I was already finding it hard to keep reminding myself that she wasn't a real wolf. Something seemed... off about that. Why should she care?

"Yea... you're right. So... about that game then. Most of these files aren't compatible with my hardware, but I can run a soft patch over them to make them work. Let me see... Oh, someone is a naughty boy. You didn't pay for some of these! I can understand pirating the ancient titles you couldn't find, but stealing a game like Gears of Halo Theft Auto twelve? Things like the push game companies into bankruptcy!"

"Sorry! I just... I didn't have the money to spare, but it looked too good to pass up."

She turned her nose up at the prospect, and turned her back on me.

"Nope! That won't fly with me, not at all. You want to play these, you have to pay for them."

"Fine... what about the old stuff? You can't find X Station 64 titles anymore, and even then, you can only buy them used. Pirating those is a victimless crime!"

She glanced over her shoulder at me, then snapped her head back around. She looked again, slower, but this time, I was waiting with the cutest face I could make.

"D'awwww... fine, but only for the old stuff. You want anything mainstream, you have to pay for it. You have a controller?"

I face palmed, then bounded back into my cabin. At least I was getting better at low gravity maneuvering. She smiled as I returned with a standard game controller, and she opened up a window on a nearby touch screen for me to browse my selection. Looking through all my favorites, I decided to go for the one classic that never got old.

"Hmm... I'm thinking... Ballistic Beat Down incorporated. Can't argue with a classic."

"OOOH, I _love_that one! Can I play too? Please? Pretty please?"

"Um... How?"

She jumped off of the main screen and landed in a beanbag to a side screen as the game opened on the main display. She was already holding her own controller, as the BBDi intro played. Sure enough, when I got to the VS menu, the player 2 selector gauntlet was wiggling around of its own accord. We picked our characters, and then she proceeded to stomp me ten matches in a row. There was nothing at all I could do to stop her; her reflexes were flawless, her timing was perfect, and she knew every trick in the book. After suffering such embarrassing defeat for a solid half an hour, I threw my hands in the air.

"Ugh. Well, enough VS, let's go for the co-op campaign! I can't even scratch you."

"Aw, don't be sour just because you lost to a girl!"

"I'm not being sour, you're cheating!"

"Oh really?" I glanced over to her chair, where she stood up and cracked her knuckles. "THAT wasn't cheating, that was skill. THIS is cheating."

She leapt from one screen to the other and landed squarely within the BBDi fighter select screen. She added a new tile to the character select with her face on it and then fist punched it. Her realistic look and outfit was replaced by a colorful cartoony one to match the game, and I picked my best character. The game started, and she calmly walked up and paralyzed me with some kind of lazar. She wound up hard then punted my character right in the groin. He flew off screen, died, and I lost all three lives at once. Then, just to rub it in, the game announcer laughingly stated "You suck! Go home!"

I took it in good humor, and laughed with her as she closed the application. She kept the colorful, cartoony outfit on though, but her smile was far brighter than its colors.

"Serves you right! I'm not a cheater, I'm just naturally skilled."

"Ha, I can believe that! Can you do that with anything?"

"Anything that's data. Games, pictures, it's all just binary, same as me. If you know what you're doing, all it takes is a few nudges, and I can be in any program in the ship's logs."

"Nice. I guess that explains why you wanted my stash on the mainframe then."

Did I mention that I'm a fucking moron? Sometimes my mouth runs miles ahead of my brain, and I say the stupidest shit. This was one of those times. She blushed crimson and ducked her head, clasping her arms behind her back. She didn't say anything but more importantly, she didn't deny it. I'd said it as a joke, but looking at her...

"You... you could do it with that too?"

She didn't answer, just blushed harder and shyly nodded her head a bit. I almost wanted to ask if I could watch, but even I recognized that something like that would be waaaay over the line of what was acceptable. Then again, the difference between luck and stupidity is all in the outcome.

"When... when you said you were programmed to enjoy helping me, in any way possible... was this something that was included in that?"

More blush, and another tiny nod. She looked so damn cute that I wanted to just scoop her up in my arms, but that wasn't going to happen. She looked nervous though, nervous and shy, and more than my natural inclination to take her up on it, I didn't want to pressure her into something she didn't want. At that point, I decided to stop reminding myself that she was an AI, and just treat her like anyone else. She acted more alive than most of the people I knew anyways.

"If you don't want to, that's alright, I understand. I wouldn't ask you to do something you were uncomfortable with."

"Actually... I was wondering if you could... I mean..."

She was unbearably adorable when she blushed like that, and I leaned forwards in an attempt to hide the growing bulge in my pants.

"Amy... you can say whatever you want, and I promise I won't judge you for it. I like you, and I want you to be happy."

She fell to her knees and ducked her head to hide her face, but the camera panned down to keep a visual of her.

"Could... Could I make a simulacrum of you... and pretend it was really you? Just for a little while... I get so lonely in here... I just want someone to hold me, even if it is only a puppet.

I didn't quite understand her meaning at first, but I answered truthfully all the same.

"Of course. I'm not really sure what that entails, but I just want to make you happy."

She nodded a little, and all of the screens snapped to display her world as the black expanse behind her became a bedroom, the kind any teenage girl might have. "3 Tales of Chemical Romance," "Haste The Dawn," and "Record Low" posters were hung around the room, and a toy bin was overflowing with stuffed animals, relics of her youth. There was a knock at the door, and I watched myself stride into the room and sweep her into my arms, just like I had been aching to do this whole time. It would have been incredibly sweet if not for the fact that my... simulacrum... was completely naked.

"Um... why am I not wearing any clothes?"

The picture froze, and Amy's thin, timid voice issued from the speakers.

"Please... help me pretend... just for a little while..."

The hell was I doing? The moral implications of watching my AI have sex with a puppet that had my face on it were odd to say the least, but... she sounded so desperate... so lonely... I ignored the voice at the back of my head and replied the way she so clearly wanted me to.

"Shh... don't worry Amy. It'll be alright."

My doppelganger on screen mouthed the words as I spoke them, and he cradled her in his arms.

"Michael..."

She whispered it softly into his ear, and he nibbled hers playfully. She gave an uncertain smile, and I chuckled a little as I/he traced a finger down the side of her face.

"You're beautiful when you smile... did you know that?"

"Michael, I'm scared... I've never done anything like this before..."

"Sh-sh-sh... it only hurts the first time, and even then only for a little while."

"Alright... I want you to be happy... I want to be happy with you. Please... Michael..."

I was rapidly losing my ability to distinguish reality and fantasy. What was real? This scene playing out before me... Was it real? It existed in audio and video, in Amy's mind, in her processors. Was it real to her? She glanced out the screen at me as she said it, and the implications of what she said settled in. She wanted me to masturbate... while watching her have sex with a digital replica of me... I wasn't sure if the idea was disturbing or kinky. Cameras were stashed all over the ship to give her multiple perspectives of every space, and I had no doubt that she would be watching me just as I was watching her. Still, I'd come too far to back out now. I pushed the chair back, away from the controls, then stood, arching my back as much as I was able, clearly revealing the sizeable bulge in my pants. I ditched my shirt with relative ease, but I fiddled with the zipper on my pants for several seconds before slowly pulling it down. My boxers were already straining from my erection, but jeans and undergarments both fell to the floor after a few seconds' hesitation. I wasn't wearing any shoes, so kicking out of my pants was relatively easy, and then I was standing buck naked, red cock proudly jutting forwards.

On screen, Amy rubber her hands through fake-me's fur, drifting her fingers lower and lower until they touched his sheath. The red tip of his cock poked out, and she tentatively rubbed it with her fingers, coaxing more out of its hiding place. She had replicated every inch of my manhood, all the way down to my fuzzy balls, which the groped and tickled with one hand. She pressed her lips against his and they kissed sweetly as she rubbed up and down on his rapidly swelling shaft. She pushed her fingers between the sheath and his thick spear to grab him and pull the last few inches out with a nervous giggle. He stood at full attention then, and we both stared at her hungrily. She still wore the playful costume from BBDi, which appeared to be held in place by nothing but two shoulder straps. These, he tugged to the side, and the material puddled around her as it fell to the floor. She wore nothing beneath it, and I gasped as every inch of her beautiful snow white fur was laid bare for my eyes alone.

"You are beyond beautiful... enchanting..."

She smiled and blushed beneath our hungry stare, and I am not ashamed to say I started stroking myself as I watched her pure form on the display. He kissed her again, and rubbed a hand over one of her cute, perky breasts, alternating between rolling it in his palm and tweaking the nipple gently. She moaned, already going weak kneed, and he scooped her up to carry her to the bed. The main display turned dynamic, switching perspectives to try and always provide the best view, while the other screens turned static to provide alternate shots. His lips met hers as his fingers trailed down her chest and stomach, allowing the camera to switch to a view of right between his legs. She was wet already, and his throbbing cock hung over her stomach, patiently twitching, eager to be buried somewhere soft and warm. He slid one finger into her cunt, barely getting halfway up to the knuckle before he stopped. He gently twisted it within her, poking and rubbing at her walls, even thrusting it in and out a little, but he never went any deeper; he wanted to claim her virginity the right way. A second finger joined the first, and already she was crying out my name as she writhed beneath his touch. After a good minute of him teasing her with his fingers and me slowly stroking myself, she stopped panting and moaning long enough to speak.

"Stop... stop, I can't take your teasing anymore. I need you, all of you."

We chuckled softly as he pulled his fingers out of her soaked flower. She was all but dripped nectar, and he put both fingers in his mouth to suck them clean. She smiled shyly, but squirmed over onto her stomach, then rose up onto her hands and knees. He immediately sank a little lower, lining her back with his chest, and he pressed forwards to rub his needs flesh over her soft, virgin folds.

"Oh, gods yes. Please Michael, I need this. I need you inside me. I feel like I'm on fire."

Another sly grin, but I didn't say anything as he maneuvered himself into position. He palmed her clitoris as he spread her lips in a V, allowing him to poke just the tip of his long cock into her. She moaned, rendered speechless by pure need, but he only bent his head to whisper into her ear. I knew my line, the same as any man does.

"This is going to hurt a little, but only a little, and only at first. The fun starts after the pain is gone."

She nodded, visibly having to restrain herself from shoving herself backwards onto him. She didn't though; that would have ruined the fantasy.

"On the count of three."

She nodded, eager and anxious in equal measures.

"One... two... "

He shoved forwards just before three, bottoming out inside of her as she screamed. She wobbled on the verge of collapse, but his strong arm wrapped around her chest and he licked her neck soothingly, nibbling away her pain.

"Shhh... that's my brave girl. The hardest part is over."

Her sobs turned to sniffles, and those too quickly quieted into soft moans. He was rocking with her, and the friction of their bodies was quickly overwhelming the fast fading pain. Her white fur was stained crimson by the trickle of blood that mixed with her lubricants as it flowed. After perhaps a minute, she gave a shaky smile, half to him and half to me.

"Thank you... I need this."

We smiled and he licked her cheek playfully. He pulled out all the way to the tip before slowly pushing in again. His tip nestled snugly against her cervix even though he had a good inch left to go, and as she felt herself with a shaky hand, she reached the same conclusion I did.

"Are you going to..."

"Not yet. Not till the end."

His well lubricated flesh gleamed as he slid it out from her warm body, but this time there was a little more force as he pushed it back into her. A softly flashed touch screen snagged my attention, and I glanced to the side to see a simple binary slider. I absentmindedly flicked it to the side, and was rewarded as the main screen acquired a cross section view of her tunnel, giving me perfect, unobstructed vision of his meat sliding into her even though his leg and her body should have been blocking the view. It was the kind of thing you only saw in anime, if even then, and my hand started moving a little faster, unconsciously meeting his pace as he too sped up. He stopped pausing between thrusts and the air was filled with the sound of flesh sliding over slick flesh, punctuated by their soft grunts and moans. As he picked up pace, I could see his tip ramming into her cervix at each stroke, desperately seeking entrance, desperate for just a little more room so he could well and truly hilt himself inside of her.

"Oh... Michael... Oh gods yes, give it to me! Make me real again!"

He removed one hand from the bedspread just as she had, but where hers was furiously rubbing her clit, his reached up to fondle her breasts. He rubbed his slightly calloused hands over her silky fur, gently rubbing and groping her to the increased sound of her moans. They reached a furious pace, and my hand joined them. His tip battered and rammed against the doorway to her womb, and neither of us were going to let it end until he broke through. I was starting to get distracted by my own pleasure; it was hard to see them through the haze that lay over my mind. With an effort though, I focused my vision down even as I approached a moment that would mark me for the rest of my life.

"Amy... I'm..."

"Do it, inside of me! I want all of you, I want everything you can give me. Fill me Mike, make me whole again!"

Her cervix was tight, but it was only a muscle, and all muscles tire eventually. With one last desperate thrust, he pushed the tip through the tight ring of muscles, effectively penetrating her twice at once. She screamed with pleasure and clamped down around him, muscles spasming in an attempt to milk his seed from him. Watching her climax was just enough to topple me, and I grunted as my balls tensed and I shot my load all over the flight controls. On screen, I was rewarded with a view of fake me also cumming, shooting his virile payload directly into her womb. Not a drop leaked out as her flexing body pulled the last drips from him; her cervix was clamped tight around the end of his dick. Her stomach bulged slightly from the sheer weight of his deposit, and he pulled back agonizingly slowly before they both fell to the bed panting. The X-ray was still on, and I got to watch her cervix close tight, sealing his seed inside of her.

Had she been a real woman, she would absolutely become pregnant from this. As it was, she was left with happy memories and I was left with sticky controls. I got a towel and wiped down the surfaces as best I could, glancing up now and again to see that they were still snuggling together on the bed. I almost said something, almost broke to silence, but I only had to look at the smile on her face to shut my own. I'd let her hold this moment for a while longer, but we would have to talk about it eventually. Now wasn't the time.

I minimized them both off of the screen and accelerated to get to the station faster. I got clearance from the docking masters, landed, then pulled up the extranet to personally tell the news to my friends and family. Once I left dock, I'd be out of contact with civilization until I made port again, so I was getting my fill of MeTube and Facepage while I could. They had the cargo loaded pretty quickly, and I took off without a hitch. I angled towards my first destination, a backwater farming planet near the rim and launched into Aether space before opening up the window onto Amy again. She and my puppet appeared to be asleep, and while that struck me as odd, it had been a long day, so I rose out of my chair and padded down the hallway towards my bed. I didn't feel like showering or unpacking, so I just flopped down atop the cushion and did my best to catch some sleep When I did, my dreams were haunted by a solemn white wolf, always just beyond my reach, always suffering in ways I couldn't help.