FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

It was a dark and stormy night.

An icy wind howled around Nathan as he walked down the hill, getting into the hood of his parka and making him shiver. Just yesterday it had been cool, bright and sunny. As everybody said, if you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes. He'd had to dig his parka out from where it had fallen in the back of the closet.

He was slightly late. It had taken longer than he'd expected to find a grocery that carried the beverages he wanted. Hopefully Luke wasn't worrying.

The neighborhood certainly had changed. When he was an undergrad, Nathan had rented a room in an old lady's home on University Avenue. She and her neighbors were gone now. Where their homes had been was a multi-story apartment building, obviously the "highrise" where Luke was living.

The lobby door was locked, of course.

Speed-dial 4. (His sister was on 2, a cousin on 3)

"Hi, Nathan! Why the call? Something wrong?" Luke did sound slightly worried.

"I'm afraid so. I'm not sure I'll be able to make it." He paused. "Your lobby door is locked."

He heard a relieved laugh. "Is that all?" as the door unlocked.

"Yup. That's all for now. I'll see you shortly."

The apartment door opened instantly when he knocked.

The golden fur on the outer sides of Luke's arms was slightly darker than the fur of their insides, almost as if it'd been lightly toasted. He looked good enough to... Nathan quickly suppressed the thought. Luke was wearing a t-shirt popular in the Engineering School. Its front was covered with writing: "And God Said" was followed by Maxwell's equations, with "and There Was Light" below. It was the first time Nathan had seen him in anything other than long-sleeved shirts.

"Hi, Nathan, come on in! Gimme your coat."

"Hi. Sure, but take the beverages first. I got a selection." He handed Luke the six-pack of brown and green bottles. They were brightly labeled with the logo of a local brewery. Luke stared at them somewhat bemusedly.

"Well?" Nathan asked as he held out his coat.

"Oh, sorry," Luke reached for the coat with his free hand.

"Here, I'll take that back since you obviously don't know what to do with it." Nathan retrieved the carton of beers.

"I didn't know which kind of beer you liked, so I got both." He paused again and grinned. "Root *and* ginger!"

Luke smiled as he hung the parka in the closet. "If you keep that up, I won't be able to trust anything you say ever again. And take your shoes off, please. I'd rather not have any dirt tracked in."

"Sure. I do the same at home." He left them on a sheet of newspaper next to Luke's.

Luke was barefoot. His insteps were covered with pale fur.

"I'm sorry about the heat. There's no thermostat and I still haven't gotten the baseboards adjusted right. One of the problems with this place."

"It feels good, actually. It's really cold out."

"Well, it feels hot to me. Normally I'd just open the windows, but the way the wind is blowing, it'd make things howl.

"Don't just stand there! Sit down, relax, I'll get the pizza."

"Do you have some glasses? If you haven't had it before, you probably should just taste the ginger beer first. It's a lot stronger than that stuff they call ginger ale. It actually tastes like ginger. I really like it myself." He was starting to run on. Nathan was feeling a little nervous.

The couch was soft and comfortable, with only a few shed hairs between the cushions. The low table in front of it obviously had been thoroughly polished recently.

"Here's a plate and napkins."

Luke opened the box. The pizza was half meat and half veggies and smelled great, but Nathan was surprised. "No cheese?"

"Well, you did say your doctor would be pissed, so I figured we shouldn't get him too upset." Luke sat down next to him.

"Oh, well, if you insist."

"I do. It might even keep you around a little longer. On the planet, I mean," he quickly clarified. "Eat up!"

Luke seemed to enjoy the ginger beer.

Posed on the waterbed across the room, the stuffed tiger obviously was on display.

"I'm surprised your landlord allows pets," Nathan commented around a mouthful of broccoli and tomato sauce.

"Yeah, well, they don't seem to mind if the animal's quiet and doesn't make messes. This one's very well behaved."

"I don't think I've ever seen one that large, before. Little ones, of course. It looks soft. Did they use polyfill?"

"Polyfill? What's that? I thought they're stuffed with cloth or something." Luke stuffed himself with another slice of pizza.

"Well," Nathan explained, "some manufacturers do use cloth fragments, and sometimes foam rubber, but polyfill works best. It's made from polyester and dacron fibers. They use it for insulation in winter coats, too."

"The tiger was a gift. I'm not really sure what it's made of. I've never seen one like it in the stores in town. Where do you suppose he came from?"

"Well, they must be available on the Web somewhere, and some big city toy stores have them. There's one store in Boston that I know has some pretty big animals. I'm not sure if they have tigers, though. Maybe one of our local stores could be persuaded to make a special order. Do you know who made it?"

"I don't remember. It came with a long pedigree, which seemed strange. Let me show you the tag, though. Uh, just a minute." He pushed the table out of the way and went to the bathroom for a damp washcloth. After wiping his own hands, Luke tossed it to Nathan. "Get your hands clean! I'd rather not get tomato sauce in his fur."

Luke got Ben and flopped him across their laps. He ruffled though the tiger's fur looking for a tag.

"Here it is. Kinda small letters."

In very tiny print, "Plush Companions, Inc." was written in gold letters across a smudged red circle. The smudges didn't come off when Luke rubbed them.

"You think the red circle means it's from Japan?"

"Hmmm. I'm not sure." Nathan squinted at it. "It looks more orange than red to me, and those grey marks look like they're part of the design. The Japanese usually use just a plain red circle. I'm not sure I recognize the company name, either, although that doesn't mean much."

"Hey, they must have a Web site!

"Here, you pet him for a while," Luke grinned, and went over to turn on his computer. Nathan stroked the cat's fur. It certainly was soft. And it smelled good too. Sort of a musky floral odor.

Luke brought the screen back to the table and sat closer to Nathan so they both could see it easily. He started tapping on the table in front of the display. Nathan didn't care for the virtual keyboards that were getting to be more and more popular. He preferred the ones with keys you could push down.

Lots of pages were listed, but not the company they wanted. Quotes didn't help, either. And some of the sites obviously were not intended for youngsters.

"I can't find them, Nathan."

"Well, let's be optimistic. Maybe their site's too new to be cataloged. Check the yellow pages."

The U.S. yellow pages site didn't have a listing, and neither did the international one. "What else?"

"Well, try whois."

Nope, even the Internic didn't seem to know about them.

Luke wiped his forehead and finished off his third beer. His t-shirt was getting damp, too. Nathan was still nursing his second root beer.

"Don't give up yet. There are plenty of other registrars." The obvious ones didn't have a clue.

"Why not just try connecting?" Nathan suggested. "What'd be a reasonable name for them?" He was scratching Ben under the chin.

"That could take a while. Let's see....nope: 'no such host'. What else?"

Nathan made some more suggestions, then finally "Hey! 'Connecting to remote site!'"

The first page had the right company name, anyhow. But what was this "Best seen with a 4D viewer" nonsense?

"I think they're pulling our legs," Nathan chuckled.

"The logo's looks right, though. Strange, with it bigger like that, it looks awfully familiar for some reason."

"Yeah. It does. I'm sure it's Mars. Look at their address down at the bottom of the page."

"Well, then, it does have to be joke, doesn't it? I mean, there isn't anybody living there, is there?"

"Well, who knows what the Chinese are doing. There hasn't been any publicity since their taikonauts had that accident on the Moon a few years ago."

They explored a little further. It kept getting stranger and stranger. Some of the pages seemed almost reasonable, but then they got weird. Quite a few of the pages didn't look like any language either of them recognized. It didn't look like Chinese at all. Maybe they'd been corrupted somehow. Hackers, maybe?

Luke was starting to pant a little. Nathan had thought he was just getting overly stressed over the failing searches, but maybe it was something else.

"Luke, are you OK? You look like you're getting really warm."

"Yeah, I'm really starting to feel the heat, for some reason."

"Well, I'm feeling a bit warm, but not as much as you seem to be. Why don't you try opening the window?"

The wind was still blowing hard. The ventilation howled even with the window open only a crack.

"Wow, what'd they do, put whistles in there?"

"I dunno, but I'd rather not listen to it," Luke admitted as he closed the window again. "It actually hurts."

The room hadn't cooled at all.

"Well, look, I'd rather not have to take you to the hospital with heat prostration. Why don't you take off your shirt? I'm sure it's not helping." With all that fur, it must be the equivalent of a parka, he thought.

"You don't mind?"

"Of course not. You need to get cooler."

"Well, OK." He almost sounded reluctant. "I think I'll change my pants, too."

Getting a pair of short pants out of the dresser, he went into the bathroom and closed the door. Nathan heard the shower run for a minute or so.

"That does feel a lot better," Luke admitted when he came out.

Nathan swallowed. The fur on Luke's front was a light gold, matching what was on his face and the undersides of his arms. The fur on his back had the darker, slightly toasted look, while a similar distribution of light and dark shades colored his legs. He was still a little damp from the shower he'd taken to cool off.

Nathan tried clearing his throat again. "Well, we seem to have found the company. What was it you wanted to know?"

Luke came back to sit on the couch. If anything, he seemed to be sitting closer than before. Or maybe Nathan was just imagining it. He kept Ben in his lap, tickling the ears to distract himself.

"I really want to try to find out who sent me the tiger. There was no return address on the package, and no invoice, either. I hoped maybe the manufacturer could tell me who bought it."

"Well, maybe. If they shipped it directly to you, they certainly ought to have a record. Of course, whoever bought it might have told them to keep it private."

"It can't hurt to ask, can it?" Luke clicked on one of the Feedback buttons.

"All communication links are down. Please try again in 15 minutes." Luke scowled at the screen. "I suppose we could wait."

"They seem to have lots of other pages. Maybe a few of them are readable."

"Maybe."

A few of the marketing pages were readable. They even found a couple of whitepapers in English, but their contents were jokes. Either that or they were decades ahead of the award winning research going on in the university's CS and nanotech labs.

"Maybe it's actually a sci-fi story site. There are plenty of them," Nathan pointed out. Luke obviously didn't like that idea. All that searching and he still wouldn't know who sent the tiger.

"Then why's their logo the same as the one on Ben? Wouldn't that be a copyright violation?"

"Yeah. Or trademark. Companies really get upset about that kind of thing. Maybe we just misunderstood. Let's look at them again. Maybe they have a 'forward looking' footnote we overlooked."

They didn't.