FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"My God... I-I didn't know. I mean, I just didn't know." Jason had gone pale, all the color had fled his face, and even his pale hair seemed suddenly whiter. Maria could smell the sweat suddenly forcing its way to the surface of his skin, the hot stink of it. She knew what would be coming next. The collie meta lifted his arm around her shoulder, tried to get him to the bathroom before...

He didn't make it. The human collapsed in the middle of the room, vomiting onto his own slacks, coughing, vomited again, and then started dry-heaving as there was nothing left. That was good, in a small way: he hadn't choked as he tried to hold it back, but now he stank of stale, to-go pizza, breadsticks, and bile.

Maria wasn't dressed for medical attention. She wore panties and a sheer night-robe, but she could already see a bit of yellowish fluid at the end of the robe. She was going to have to discard them anyways, so she didn't mind kneeling down beside him, even though it let more of the vomit soak into the fabric.

She put soft paws on his head, brushing fur against his cheeks. "Come on now. It's really not that bad. Please, take a deep breath. For me." It was the sweetest voice the collie could make, pleading tones for a lover. She didn't consider him a lover, no meta ever thought of a human that way, but she remembered enough lover's voices to imitate the tones.

"H-how..." Another dry heave, followed by a deep sucking breath. "How can you say that? You're going to die!"

"Shh, shh." She hated this part every time she had to experience it or remember it. After the initial shock, there were three possibilities. Some were angry and stormed out without another word. Some were just sad, felt nothing but pity for her. But the worst, were those, like Jason, who were terrified. They hadn't come to grips with their own mortality, let alone the mortality of anyone else. "It happens to all of us."

His head lifted. Maria couldn't scent any change, but the odor of sweat and bile would obscure everything else until he showered. And there was still no color in his cheeks, but at least he was breathing more regularly. Her touch had done something at least. "But you know. You know that it'll happen within three months. You know the exact day it'll happen." His eyes welled up, tears bursting uncontrollably down his reddish cheeks. He was in his early twenties, grown up so they said. And he was bawling. "I'll never get to see you again."

His hands touched her face, suddenly, powerfully, like he needed to hold onto her, as if holding her were enough to keep her with him forever. His hands were rough, calloused she knew from his hobbies of woodworking, not the mundane job he held sitting at a desk. She let her cheeks press into his palms, and then brought her own hands up to touch his. The sense of touch in her cheek was not what it once was (though she didn't dare to tell him that), and she wanted to touch and feel him just as well as he touched her.

"Why?" He asked, with that fierce desperation that came to men unwilling to accept the inevitable.

She sighed, wishing she could avoid explaining it all over again. "Because we're unstable." She held out her hands to him, human in form but canine in details, soft white and black fur on top, pads underneath, sharp curved claws where fingernails would have been. "We're a mix of DNA, all jumbled up. We don't hold together as long as you do. The scientists still don't know why. After three years, we start to deteriorate: fur falls out in spots, we get arthritis, sometimes a bit of dementia. After four, the process quickens. If we lived on our own, we'd be lucky to see our fifth birthday. I saw one who made it to five and a half once... it was terrible."

Jason still held onto her face, not speaking; it seemed he was memorizing her features, every tuft of fur, ever curve of her face and muzzle. He even leaned in slightly, nostrils flaring, as if he wanted to know her scent better - as silly as it was for a human to try.

She waited for his hands to slow, to stop, and then went on: "When we're born, we step out of a tube already with the body of someone in the prime of adulthood, quickly grown to the peak of our potential. Three years later to the day, we walk back into the tube, there's a white light, and we die."

"And... you're ok with this?"

"I am." She said, there was a smile on her face, serene, practiced.

He tried to take a full breath then, but gasped it out in a sudden sob he couldn't contain. He shook visibly and tried again. With a lung full of air, he knelt up, then stood, then, with her assistance, walked back and collapsed on the edge of the bed. His hands suddenly balled into fists and he slammed them into the mattress, raging at the world. "It's not fair, damn it! I was going to - I was saving up since last year!"

Maria's heart fell suddenly. She remembered so many times, speaking these same words, she knew so many responses her clients had given. This was not one of them.

He sputtered, his nose red, snot dribbling down onto his lip. He ignored it and grabbed the suitcase he had carried with him, stuffed a hand into it, pulled out three fliers: "Come see the Sierras!"

"Visit fantastic Mount Shasta!" and "Ski resorts of the West Coast."

Maria's heart sank farther. She'd told him this fantasy of hers on an earlier visit: the thought of snow slicing into the air as she banked and turned, careening full-speed down a mountainside. "You don't have the money."

"I don't care!" He shouted, angry again. "I was going to have enough next time. I've been saving everywhere I could: walking instead of taking the bus, skipping the new movies, eating fucking ramen noodles."

All for the sake of a manufactured girl he'd met four times in two years, she thought.

"It would have been just you and me... together." His hands balled up again, but he had nothing to punch: Maria had moved in too close, and he didn't want to hit her, yet. "But it won't now... I won't have enough time to get the funds together before... before..." His eyes looked into hers, scared, terrified. "I don't want to never see you again, Maria."

She steeled herself for what she had to say next, tail curled instinctively under her. "I'm just a slave, sir."

He tried to leap up, blocked by her unyielding presence. "Don't you say that! Don't you DARE call me sir!"

She blinked a solitary tear out of her own eye and put a hand to his mouth, a claw crossing his lips. He quieted, she continued. "I'm just a slave. I was made for the sole purpose of being company, providing comfort, most often in bed and sometimes out. That is a pleasure no human will ever know: to be made for a purpose, to enjoy that purpose, and to live your whole life making others smile. Please, please, don't make me cry now."

He nodded and looked down at the fliers still in his hand. Those lovely fingers so practiced at the finest detail work, polishing flutes, making whistles, toy animals, and a tiny statuette of Maria herself that held a cherished spot next to her bed - those fingers tore up his flier-based dreams into a thousand pieces of paper. He flung them into the corner of the room and screamed, bestial, pained, louder than Maria thought humans were capable.

Footsteps came quickly down the hall, a quick knock on the door. "Is everything all right in there?" Jason didn't respond. Neither did Maria. The meta outside swiped their card and the door let him inside. He was a hound dog, a little shorter than Maria, the brothel's concierge. His nose instantly wrinkled at the vomit on the floor. "Sir?"

Jason stood in the corner, facing away, unable to look at this newcomer. "When?"

"Sir?" the hound repeated.

"When do you die?"

The hound looked shocked and glanced to Maria. She gave a sad nod. "Two years, one month, thirteen days, sir," he said in monotone.

The human's lips curled, his lungs let go of a long-held breath. The last hope had gone. "Does everyone know?"

"From the day we are born, sir."

"And you all accept it?"

"From the day we are born, sir."

"You're not scared?"

"Of the pain, yes, sir. Of dying... no, sir."

Jason said nothing more and the hound took his cue to leave. He took the soiled robe from Maria's shoulders (head bowed, blushing, as it revealed her naked breasts), and rolled up the carpet Jason had vomited on, taking both with, although the stench of them still remained.

The moment he was gone, Jason spoke to Maria. But he didn't look at her, not even at the hand she laid on his shoulder. "Other humans know?"

"Of course. Our owners know. The geneticists know - they're still working on ways of extending it - think they might break five years soon. And those like you... those who spend a lot of time around the same meta for a long time."

"No one talks about it openly?"

"What good would it do? It would only make others pity us. And we don't want that. We live good lives."

"You live for three years. In a fucking slave brothel."

Maria's ears flattened against her skull. Jason had never, not once, referred to her as a slave. He'd always stepped around it, called her his company, his friend. He even called their room a hotel room.

"I know you don't tell me all of it, the men who pay for nothing more than a night's fuck and then toss you aside, the ones who want to rape you and beat you." He looked up, finally, into her eyes. "I've seen the brochures. I saw a video on the webpage. If I had ordered a whip, I could have told you to stand while I lashed you." He jumped up, pointing at the door, at the hound who was no longer there. "I could have ordered him to beat you. And he would have, even if it made you bleed, even if he broke ribs, just because I paid for it and neither of you could say no. Don't tell me this is a good life. Don't tell me that you haven't had things like that done to you."

She couldn't deny it; she had the broken ribs to prove it. "If it makes people happy," she said with the weakest of smiles.

He sighed, rubbed his bleary eyes with the back of his hands, then his hands on his shirt, as if the feeling of his tears disgusted him. "I just wanted to take you away. Just for a week. Show someone a piece of the kindness for all the kindness you've shown me. I know its what you're programmed for," he said quickly, interrupting her retort. "I also know that you're all different. I've had other metas, at other conferences, even before you. They were just there to be in my bed. But you, you talked, you smiled, you made me smile. You made me laugh! No one else has ever done that before. Human or otherwise."

"Humans shouldn't fall in love with metas," she said uncomfortably.

"It's not love. It's... friendship, a better friendship than I've ever had. If it was love, I couldn't bear to leave. As a friend, I can come back in a few months... see you again... Take you skiing. You'll never get to do that now." He was on the verge of breaking down again.

Maria put out a hand, rested it on his shoulder gently. "You never asked how I knew the light was white."

"But..." His eyes were pointed firmly at the ground, searching. "Memory transference?"

She nodded with a light smile.

"Then," he paused. The gears turned a few notches inside his head. "You can come back. They can take all your memories and just put them in a new body, right?"

"No." She had to say it, had to put down the hope before it blossomed too big. "PTD - post-transference disorder. It would be like you waking up in a whole new body tomorrow morning, one that doesn't quite move the way you want it to, with fingers that aren't quite the right length you remember, with joints that don't move the way you've known your joints to move for three years. I'd go mad, Jason. I'd go mad in hours.

"So when we die - " he cringed, but she said it anyways, " - our memories are taken, mixed with the memories of another meta here, and given to the next generation." She tapped her temples, wagged her tail a bit, tried to look happy and cheerful for him. "I have fifteen generations of memories in here. It's like instead of our parents giving us genetic material, they give us memories. I know what my two mothers did, know all the days of their three years. They're a part of me, but they aren't me."

He nodded, finally she could tell he was accepting. His hands were just held limp in his lap. "So, in six months, when I come back, there will be two metas walking around here, remembering all of this?"

Maria smiled again and nodded. "I'll have one daughter named Melanie. Her other mother decided on the name, got to pick species too: malamute." She made a tiny "gag me" motion and Jason actually had to suppress a laugh. "The other though, will be a boy, Astro. I got to name him."

"And you picked Astro?" he asked, eyebrows lifting high on his head. "And him?"

"Yes, sometimes we mix genders up. Keeps experiences interesting. I have a grandfather knocking around in my head, and so yes, every time I look in the mirror I do know full well how hot I am." This time he did laugh. "And I know Astro's father pretty well. We're pretty sure Astro's going to end up gay, like his dad, but you never know. Sometimes we surprise our earlier generations."

She held his head in her hands, his beautiful, smiling face. "And they'll both remember you, my Melanie and Astro. They'll remember how handsome you are. They'll remember how kind you are. They'll remember how much it broke my heart to know you wanted to take me skiing and I couldn't go."

He held her close, pressed her half-naked body in against him and tried to stifle the new flood of tears in her neck. "And will they remember tonight too?"

"Yes," she said.

"Then let's make it a good one." He kissed her deeply, threw off his tear-stained, bile-scented clothes, and pulled the sheets over them both.

6 months later...

"Astro! Astro!" The hound dog impatiently tapped his foot, as the mutt came sprinting up the hall to the front desk. The younger male was heaving, panting for breath, tongue lolling atavistically out of his mouth. The hound recoiled slightly at that, and then more so when his eyes gave the mutt a once-over. "What are you wearing?"

Astro took a second to collect himself, and looked down with a grin: fishnet shirt that showed off the nipple piercings he had gotten his second day alive, and tight jeans that framed his bulging sheath perfectly. Half of that was to get a rise out of the old-fashioned hound-dog (just how you bred someone so Puritan out of a memetic stock of pleasure slaves he would never know), but the other half was because today was the day Jason's conference started up. Astro and Melanie - Astro much more so - had kept an eye on the calendar, wondering what would happen when today came around. Melanie got rented to someone else far in advance, but Astro's day was clear. He'd hoped that it was just a surprise, that he'd wander down here to find Jason walking in, ready to take him for the weekend. He didn't know - because his mom never knew - if Jason was straight or bi, and Astro really, really hoped it was the latter: all his memories of her time with him had been great.

But Astro was here, and the lobby was empty outside of the still disgusted hound. Astro stifled a giggle and swayed his hips as if hitting on the older meta. "So, whatcha got for me?"

"A package."

Astro stifled another giggle at the double entendre but looked over the counter to see, not so much a package, but a bulky letter. Astro's name was penned gallantly on the front. There was no indication of who the sender was. Astro reached out and opened it.

His jaw didn't move, his normally hyper-active tail just hung behind him as he read. The hound dog couldn't see the letter enough to read it and attempted to get up on tip-toe to see what had so shocked the mutt. "What? What is it?"

Wordlessly, Astro pulled out a single, long ticket: "Please enjoy your romantic get-away for two at the wonderful Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood," it read.

"All ski fares included."