FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

It was a dark and stormy night, but warm and cozy inside.

"Do you think it could be for real?" Luke really would have liked that. He glanced over at the tiger with its head in Nathan's lap.

"I just don't see how it could be. Look how they're writing about the stuff, like it's common knowledge and they get to boast about it. But it's not. If it were known in the research community, it'd be all over the place. Would the CS department be wasting its time with 'plexed systems if they could work with neural nets like those?"

"Maybe it's an advertising gag. You know, making up elaborate backstories to get people interested in their plush animals."

"Maybe. But I think they'd risk getting in a lot of trouble for false advertising. I'm sure there are lots of people who would order stuffed animals that acted real. If they couldn't deliver, they'd be sued for lots of money."

"I think you're just being pessimistic again. Don't you do that enough at the lab?" Always worrying about network security and thinking about what could go wrong had to be frustrating.

"It's habit forming, I think," Nathan admitted glumly.

Luke watched him stroke the tiger. Lucky cat. It seemed to help Nathan's mood a little, though.

"Of course," Nathan continued, "there are several Japanese companies selling robotic animals. The ones I've seen look quite realistic and act convincingly in some ways, but my impression is that they're entirely mechanical and really heavy. Hmm. Well, maybe not. Carbon nanofiber skeletons would be light enough, I suppose. They're all absurdly expensive, though."

"Didn't one of the pages say something about mechanical amplifiers being available? Maybe motors're actually used all the time and the stuff about fibers is a cover story."

"Maybe. But your cat's too soft to have bones and motors. Has he ever moved on his own?"

"Not that I know of." Unless it happened that very first night? Nah, he must've moved it himself.

Nathan leaned back on the couch and offered Ben.

"Here. You feel him. He's your cat. I don't feel right mauling him to find out if he's anything more than plush and foam. You're more familiar with him, anyhow. Have you noticed any lumps?"

Luke leaned back against the cushions, too. His left arm brushed against the front of Nathan's shirt as he took Ben's forequarters in his arms. The cat's rear was still in Nathan's lap.

"I've squeezed him pretty tight sometimes," he admitted. "But I've never noticed any real lumps. The chest is firm, but that must be to support the head. It wouldn't stay up without that, would it? But why's it so heavy? It's pretty hard, too.'

"Well, they do have to use a rigid form so the head keeps its shape. It wouldn't look right if it were all floppy. Maybe that's all it is. Huh. Look at us. Now we're acting as if that site's for real. It can't be, can it? Occam's razor. It's gotta be fiction."

He appreciated Nathan's effort -- trying to take some of the blame for being taken in. But Luke was the one almost wanting, almost afraid, for Ben to be a Companion. Nathan had been mostly rejecting the very concept. One more reason to like him.

Too bad he wasn't Family. Luke missed the grooming sessions they'd had when he was young. It had been a very long time. Stans just didn't seem to do anything equivalent, not that Luke could tell. Some of the movies he'd seen suggested that something equivalent might happen in private, but if so, it was much too personal to ever be mentioned in public. Talk he'd overheard in the freshman dorms made it seem unlikely. That kind of quiet togetherness seemed to be distasteful to them. He'd been too shy to ask his roommate, who'd seemed to want to stay as far away from Luke as he could, anyhow.

But Nathan was a friend, wasn't he? The roommate certainly hadn't been. Maybe he could ask now. It's obvious Nathan cared, or he wouldn't have insisted on Luke getting cool. And seeing just how furry he was hadn't disturbed Nathan at all, which he'd feared. The ridicule he'd experienced in the dorm was painful to remember. For all its problems, it had been a relief to learn he could afford an apartment, just to be away from that.

"You're awfully quiet all of a sudden. Lumps?" Nathan sounded concerned.

"Nope. Nothing like that, but I can't tell about the head. Do you think X-rays would show anything? I doubt the hospital would let us do an MRI." Not that he could afford it, anyhow.

"You mean at the lab? Gee. I dunno. They are advertising for proposals, but somehow I don't think examining the insides of a plush animal would qualify. It's not quite the same as watching beetles breathe." That had been a famous experiment at the lab's previous accelerator, proving that insects didn't get their oxygen just by osmosis. "On the other hand, they will have times during the accelerator tune-up when real, paying experiments couldn't be run. The beam'd still be too unstable. I wonder..."

"Come on, Nathan, you can't be serious. I was just joking." Luke clutched Ben tightly. "What about that crystal that got burned? Cut right in half, you said. They can make real death rays there." Luke remembered the way the beam intensity had shot up when his autofocus code was turned on. "That paper did say the neural nets are housed in crystals, right?"

"Luke, that's the point. The experimental beamlines are designed for studying crystals, finding out exactly how they're organized. It's only when things are misadjusted and the pulses are too long that the targets get overheated."

Nathan's explanation was not helping. Luke knew better. Everything was misadjusted during machine studies. That was the point. Twiddle things until they were perfect, but in the intermediate stages things would be way off. He had images of holes burned through the cat, fragments of crystal everywhere, memories going up in smoke.

Assuming he was a Companion. Assuming he had a positronic neural net. Assuming the Web site was on the up-and-up. Assuming Ben was faking.

But Nathan must have seen he was almost frightened. He put a comforting hand on Luke's shoulder. "Luke, I'm sorry. I wasn't serious. We're not going to do it: no proposals, no X-rays, no crystals cut in half. There are other ways to find out if anything's inside Ben, and I don't mean cutting him open, either."

The unexpected warmth of Nathan's hand made Luke relax. It had been too long since anyone had touched him informally, voluntarily. A handshake just wasn't the same.

Dreams of romping with Ben weren't the same, either. Vivid as those memories were, they weren't real, couldn't be real. This was. It wasn't much, but it was real.