FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The following afternoon had been nothing short of hectic and infuriatingly expensive for Arthur. After a paltry four hours of rest, a meager breakfast of burnt toast, slimy eggs, and day-old hash-browns, Arthur had been busy. The morning had seen him poring through books in some dingy, centralized library shoulder-to-shoulder with snobby nerds. He crammed everything to do with fluidic balance, internal mechanization, and basic automation into his already aching head and spent a veritable fortune on copies of diagrams and wiring schematics. He had driven to no less than twelve locations in search of parts, forced to do dealings with the same nerds he'd found at the library.

And they were certainly stingy in a kind word. More than that, they had been curious, far too much so for their own good. By the time he had reached his last tolerable stop of the day, he'd simply paid out the asking price for a high four-figure spine—five including the sales tax—and walked out the door amidst a slew of colorful curses cast towards the salesman.

He'd sped home, uncaring of common decency and traffic laws as he cut off just about everyone that got in his way. He kindly told them that they were number one with his middle finger when their horns blared at him. At home, he'd nearly totaled his vehicle and house in one fell motion as he slammed on his brakes and slid to a narrow stop just before striking his garage door.

He'd all but thrown his tailgate down and fumed his way towards his workshop to retrieve his dolly. He carefully unloaded his purchases; his first tender act of the day. But they weren't for him or for any of the other dolls that he kept in his workshop. They were special and for something equally if not more so.

Seven boxes in all, Arthur toted them inside his shed and promptly closed the door. He turned the lights on to illuminate a large and cluttered room filled with many disassembled animatronics in various states of disrepair. Endoskeletons lined the walls of the space; various species reduced to only their most basic structures. Many were decapitated; some were not. Across various bins lining many labeled shelves resided a vast quantity of restored parts. Joints and tendons, muscles and fibers, pneumatic actuators, pumps, servos, eyes and ears, nose-pads, tongues, gel-forms, radiators shaped like lungs, reservoirs like stomachs, re-circulators and purifiers like kidneys and livers, biometric filters and regulators, even sexual organs. It was all there; all the necessities for basic models.

Yet the 'Mangle' was anything but basic to Arthur. She deserved a more intimate kind of attention; something special, only for her.

She was one-of-a-kind, after all.

In the center of the room was a large, stainless steel slab: a workbench, sterile enough for operation. Beneath it, it was lined by several drawers, each unceremoniously crammed with a variety of tools, haphazard as was customary of the man with his instruments. He preferred them that way; tedium was reserved only for the parts on which they were used. From one of the drawers, Arthur produced a box-cutter and carefully opened his packages.

The first, the smallest of the set, contained a narrow, canine mandible. Its teeth were set and aligned, blunted, though aesthetically pleasing; it was adjustable, made to fit a wide variety of Canidae models. The lower actuators that comprised the temporomandibular joint were already in place; they allotted the jaw movement when attached to a skull. All the servos were present, the wiring harness set and secured. The tongue was absent; though, that was hardly surprising. It wasn't necessary in most animatronics as it typically served only an aesthetic purpose. The audible speech heard from animatronics originated from a vocal processor located in the anterior portion of the throat and was projected through the mouth via sophisticated amplification devices. With the proper programming, a tongue would then move in time with the syntax to give the illusion of humanized speech.

Arthur was more informed than he appeared to be; he prided himself in his education.

Setting the mandible aside, he opened the next box. It was slightly larger than the first and certainly more insulated. Inside, surrounded by Styrofoam and inflated airbags, it contained the pivotal master-recirculating pump, or MRP. It was the workhorse of the animatronic body, the powerful, high-pressure core that circulated the synthetic lifeblood throughout the machine. Alike a human heart, the MRP maintained a stable pressure within the system to provide it the hydraulic stability needed to perpetuate fluid motion. It was dynamic, autonomous, and adjusted according to the load threshold placed on the animatronic host under stress. The MRP operated outside the dictation of the command line, thus preventing its host from increasing or decreasing the pressure threshold unnecessarily, which could result in a sudden loss of power or irreparable damage.

It was largely disassembled; the numerous high-pressure hoses, couplings, and regulators were missing. It wasn't to say that Arthur hadn't bought them; they simply couldn't be bought together, which by and large was frustrating and why he'd had to make an additional stop that day. Why they weren't packaged or sold together, he was unclear. Perhaps in a textbook somewhere was the explanation; though frankly, he didn't have the patience to read it. It was just as easy to accept the will of the Regulatory Commission on Animatronics and be done with it.

They were a government entity after all; since when was the government ever efficient?

The next few boxes contained those missing parts of the pump assembly. They were vacuum sealed and neatly labeled in barely transparent, aluminum bags; a diagram came provided, dictating their anatomical positions relative to the MRP. Thirteen regulators in all, twenty-six couplings, and a slew of hoses of varying size and diameter; emblazoned upon them were the words, _Caution! High-Pressure _in bright, yellow letters.

It took some time; but, Arthur opened each individual package and carefully inspected the assembly. An inquisitive, critical eye searched for any kind of defect: cracks in the regulators, dents or gouges in the couplings, tears in the hoses, anything that might cause catastrophic failure, which was far and beyond unacceptable for an animatronic that had been broken for so long. An hour past before Arthur seemed satisfied; the MRP assembly was of acceptable quality. He returned the parts of the assembly to their respective packages and then set them aside next to the mandible.

The next box was one of the largest, though perhaps the lightest of the set. Its width was conspicuously shallow, perhaps some three inches at best where it was a few feet in length. Unlike the others, it didn't open from the top, but rather from one side which was labeled by an arrow sitting atop the word, Open. It was fastened by tape which Arthur easily cut through, and like opening a drawer he pulled out a lone part which was secured to a foam backing.

The lightest and second most expensive piece he'd bought that day, the second-stage neurological wiring harness was formed to the crude anatomical position of an animatronic at rest. A cornucopia of differently colored wires and filaments of varying thickness, the harness served the purpose of the complex neural network that permitted an animatronic machine to experience tactile sensations. Touch, smell, taste, even pain and pleasure were not beyond its capabilities. The model at hand was one of the more advanced models, capable of feeding real time information to the processing centers of the brain at speeds comparable to that of its biological counterpart. It was as impressive as it was intricate, requiring more than just a steady hand and some knowhow to integrate it properly.

Arthur was undaunted by the imposing task; if anything, it merely excited him. The 'Mangle' would be so impressed, perhaps even grateful to experience true sensations; but, it was not without the contents of the last and final purchase he'd made that day. It was in a box that was the largest of the set simply because it required so much attention. It was wrapped and secured by more protective means than a typical automobile had at its disposal; it was shielded from the light by a lead-lined package that was non-translucent. It came with all the necessary ports, ready for integration of neurological inputs and cervical members of an animatronic skull. It was flexible, yet rigid, comprised of some thirty-three separate vertebral columns that permitted fluid motion.

The spine: the literal backbone of the animatronic endoskeleton. It was the one part that Arthur did not open in his workshop. The insulation provided was mandatory for travel; it was remarkably fragile outside of a host despite its rugged construction. To secure it properly in a mechanized body, the spine had to be surrounded by specialized form-fitting gels designed to absorb impact loads as well as insulate it from sudden temperature spikes or unexpected electrical discharge.

He hadn't purchased the gels; he happened to have several in his shop. Arthur stood and walked over to one of the shelves to remove a box aptly labeled 'gels' andset it aside his purchases. He took them all, uncertain of how many it would take to give the 'Mangle' proper form again. He walked to another box and produced a fluid reservoir; from another, a simple bladder. Three re-circulators, several filters, a few pneumatic actuators and spare servos, a nose pad, and a tongue joined the growing pile, as did some mechanical muscle fibers and tendon structures. The last part he added on a whim as he walked by the container; he thought the 'Mangle' might appreciate being identified as female again. Loading the parts onto his dolly, Arthur dragged them from his workshop and loaded them into the back of his truck. He hid them from sight beneath the tonneau cover and secured it to the tailgate.

Arthur glanced at his watch: six p.m. He yawned; the day had started too early; there was still plenty of time before his shift. He locked his truck and went inside to his bedroom where he kicked off his shoes and disrobed to his undergarments. He set a reminder on the clock, and he was out before his head had ever touched the pillow.