State your name for the record, please.
-Nesbith L. Quentin, the third.

I paused. The interviews were simply a safety measure. I needed some sort of documentation, in case another of my tenants met with an unfortunate accident. It still felt weird having to interview a furry, though.

(Yes, I know, "furry" generally refers to their fans, and most actual anthros simply refer to themselves by their genus. Shut up.)

An auspicious name.
-If by that, you mean "hard to spell", then yes.

/subject laughs

I can't help but watch his lips, and the way he throws his head back. Something in the back of my mind keeps reiterating that it shouldn't even be possible for a wolf to talk, but I squelch it.

State your occupation, please.
-Logistics manager.

Que?

/subject laughs

-I plan and maintain shipping and movement of personnel for the local branch of [a multinational].

Are you aware of how much the base price is?
-Yes. I think it's fairly affordable. I am concerned about the occasional phone outages. I almost always telecommute, and such a disruption would cripple me.

My gaze wanders down to his suit, a navy pinstripe affair with a blue shirt-sans tie-worn underneath. He looks like an insurance commercial. He catches my gaze, and laughs again. That something comes back, slightly louder.

-Put yourself at ease, Mr. Paxton. I am not one of those who sit around in their bedsit all day in a filthy singlet, downloading and carefully sorting questonable materiel. I have a job to do, and what I consider to be a fairly active social life.

He smiles with what seems like far too many teeth.

Your vocabulary...
-Verbose, isn't it? I minored in classical literature, and it's never left me.
Any family or loved ones? Contact numbers, that sort of thing?
-My family and I are estranged, I'm afraid. Has to so with

/subject points at his head

-this.

I notice that he doesn't mention friends. He gives me his current address-a hotel, paid for by the company-and says that he hopes to see me soon. We stand up, and shake hands. He has a firm grip.

-Oh.

/subject ducks back into camera frame

-I, Nesbith L. Quentin, have stated all documented on this videotape with full knowledge of it's existance. I was informed, ahead of time, by Mr. Paxton, that this interview would be recorded, and have made all previous statements in clear mind, and sound body.

/subject leaves camera frame.
/interviewer turns face to camera for the first time

Jacob Paxton, the first of June, two-thousand and six. Five...five thirty-nine in the afternoon.

/interviewer leaves frame

Anything else?
-Not that I know of.
Anyone ever tell you you sound like Kelsey Grammer?
-All the time.

/interviewer reaches toward camera, stops recording.

I like this guy.

I haven't been in a chatroom in ages.

I'm almost embarrassed to admit it; the last time I went in a chatroom was almost a decade back, in 1996. It was a sluggish little TNG chatroom, filled with people who refused to believe that, yes, Kirk would hand Picard his head. I distinctly recall signing out in disgust, looking out the window, and heading out to start my Christmas shopping. She still has the scarf.

Anyway, when I tried to get back into it, out of boredom, I went to Mr. X.

Read more..."Let me get this straight," he said, rolling back in his chair. "You haven't touched a chatroom in over nine years?"

"Yes."

"AIM?"

"No."

"Messanger?"

"No."

"SMS?"

"What?"

"No." He pauses, and I swear he's smiling behind his steepled fingers. "Things have changed a bit."

"How so?"

He hands me a box. It contains a headset, a few discs, and a mildly terrifying amount of wires. "Hook this up to your computer. Then...we'll talk."

Well, that was forboding.

After a half-hour of sweating, grunting, and cursing, I had the thing set up. It was evidently a prototype device, and somehow managed to accelerate my humble little Dell far beyond the system specs. I figured the headset must have a processing unit of its own. Despite the thought of a heatsink inches from my brain, I put it on.

Nothing but darkness.

I turned it on.

My desktop popped up. The mouse was over to the left, and as I realized I had no idea how to work this thing, I began to follow it with my eyes. It promply slid off to the left. I returned my eyes to center, and the cursor followed.

It was kind of like what happens when you're lying awake at night in a dim room, and you see spots off to the side. You try to follow them, but they just skate off, the faster the more you chase them. An interface based on eye-tracking was stupid, and if I wasn't using a probably-stolen prototype, I would write in to comp-

Firefox opened itself and navigated to the company's contact page.

Oh. Not eye tracking. Mind-reading. Google, search for .MU2 chats. I randomly selected one, and the main chat program opened itself.

A furry tavern. How original.

My avatar was set to the default grey model. I went into the editor, and reconfigured it into the character I had drawn over twenty years ago, back when I had wanted to grow up to be a furry. Back before that could be acheived in nine monthly payments of $1999.99 each.

Aside: some might say that direct mind control would make it easier to create. Bull. It takes just as much skill as real media, except without the physical effort; I ended up using the pregenerated models and modifying them slightly. It's kinda like putting a small child in front of an easel with some paints; unless they know what they're doing, all that you'll get is a mess.

A slimmish wolf walks into a bar.

The first thing I noticed was that most of the avatars had a curious pattern of diagonal yellow and black stripes around their crotches. Some of the females even had it at their chest. Some were bigger than others. Was it a rendering glitch? I pulled up the menu, and found that the content level was set to "G", and the stripes were actually the "Censored" texture. I flipped it to the maximum setting, then exited.

And froze. Please don't make me describe it.

One male, mistaking my trembling for horniness, walked up to me, his

massive black length*

tipping over tables and knocking small paintings off the walls. He approached obliquely, as walking directly forward would've slowly pushed me out of the door.

"You want to yiff?" he said.

"Excuse me?" I said. I knew what the word meant, but by left brain had mostly shut down, leaving only protocol.

He leaned in closer. "Do. You. Want. To. Yiff?" To my horror, several arteries on his member began to pump. The sim lagged slightly.

"No! I don't want to have simulated sex with you! I don't understand why you feel the need to have such a huge cock! Have you ever had sex? Bigger!=better! You'd need a seperate arterial system for that much blood! That's as big as the rest of your body twice over! What are you compensating for?" I grab him by the shoulders. "Did mommy beat you? Did uncle tommy touch your no-no place? Tell me! I can help!"

I don't suppose I was thinking too clearly.

He produced a FF-style masamune out of thin air, and tried to run me through with it. Since this was a safe sim, all it did was push me back. Wide-eyed and staring, my avatar leapt back several feet and crouched, snarling predatorially. I can hear laughing.

"You're out of line!" says a frightened lamb, her junk quietly dripping somehting I don't want to think about onto the floor.

"You're out of order! You're ALL out of order!" I yell, flinging my arm out in front of me. Throught the digital sweat-or is it tears-falling into my eyes, I see an ice-pale herm teleport in. This, I found out later, was the mod. She focused on me.

"Kill the excluder," she says, in tones like glaciers. Everyone in the room unsheathes their weapons and begins advancing. My avatar backs up against a wall. I squeeze my eyes shut, and hurredly go through the logout motions. They're frozen; the mod jammed me in. With a guttural cry, I rip the power cord from the headset.

The darkness is silent, but for the laughing.

My wife had gotten home sometime during my little mise-en-scene, and recognized what I was doing immediately; the school she teaches at has them classified as contraband, and there had been a surge in them lately. She turned on the monitor to watch, and her amusment grew as she observed, leaving her literally ROFL.

"What...what was that?" she managed to choke out. "Did you just quote a line from A Few Good Men?" And she started laughing again. I looked at her sourly.

"It's not funny," I said, wiping my face with my handkerchief. "I was seriouly taumatized, and not thinking clearly. I may require therapy." And this, for some reason, set off even more paroxysms.

"Why weren't you shocked and awed by that stuff?" I continued, when she finally subsided.

"One," she said, wiping tears from her eyes, "I deal with those every day. Two, I work at a public school."

*That's not my interpretation. That's actually an object description. His e-penis was large enough to be classified as a seperate model. It had its own fluid dynamics.

It's supposed to be spring here.

There's still slush on the streets, as well as pretentious Manhattenites. Dear Matties; You are not Carrie Bradshaw. Cocktails don't equal lunch. There is more to life than sex, stingers, and Starbucks. Sheesh.

New tenant. Artsy type. Andry herm. Wears black and an expression like he just smelled something rancid.

"I am celibate," he told me, as we were poring over his paperwork. "I have foregone earthly pleasures in persuit of my artistic ideal."

"That's nice," I responded. "Sign here. Initial here. And here."

"I have devoted my life to the worship of Sariswati" he went on. "For me, there can be no worthier pursuit than that of an artistic ideal."

"That's twice you've said 'artistic ideal'," I murmured.

"What?"

"Sign here." I straightened up, and, on a hunch, asked him what kind of art he drew. He sniffed haughtily.

"I depict lascivious members of the fairer sex of tractable disposition who feel no qualms about the inherent sexuality of their bodies."

I ran it through my reverse-BS-translator, the one I use to read Tycho's Penny Arcade newsposts.

"Hot naked women?"

"If you must be so crude."

Today, as I was taking the last of the Christmas ornaments down-it's amazing how the little mistletoes seem to multiply-when I heard a thump and a scream from 3B, Miss Bliss' apartment.

Ms. B. is the name she signes her checks with; since 1985, the law has legally allowed oneself to sign documentation with one's assumed, properly registered performer name. I did some Googling and found out that she was, indeed, a camwhore, under the name Mama Bliss. Ignoring the Oepedial undertones(brr), I went about my buisness, and never gave a second thought as to where the checks are coming from, as long as they were coming on time.

Until now.

I happened to be ten feet from the door at the time, so I dropped everything and sprinted over. I had suspected that she was shooting material in there, but I didn't have enough to throw her out on. Ms. B. had only chained the door shut, which, in this city, is woefully inadequate. I was able to take it down with one hit.

The scene was unusual, to say the least.

There was a large wolf on the ground, clad in a cybernetic fursuit. I know it was a cyberFurSuit because his penis was already half the size of his thigh and growing.

This is a common problem with these things; the suit has to draw mass from somewhere to create what it does. It is possible to use preformulated packs, but if one wants to go beyond that, the suit begins drawing mass and blood from the body.

This causes...problems.

The human body has only so much blood, and when it starts growing what's basically an extra limb, the blood gets drawn from other parts of the body.

In this case, the brain.

I had already pulled out my cellphone by the time I reached him, and relayed info from a tearful Bliss to the 911 operator, who sounded like she was holding back laughter. Another fetishist injured in the line of pooty. Hey, Frank, get a load of this one.

After the ambulance came, we stood in the slush and watched it drive off. Bliss was shivering, and I suggested we go back inside. She snapped out of her daze.

"Huh? Oh, I was just thinking." She smiled faintly, and I suddenly realized that I was standing next to a pretty, emotionally vunerable half-naked young woman. "Thinking what I'd tell my children if their father was killed by a misplaced semicolon."

My brain read that she was talking about the 'suit's code, and then froze. "C-children?" I stammered.

Her smile widened. "I was going to tell him." She stroked her stomach. "I'm pregnant. Twins, in fact."

I had a rather mediocre Christmas, folks. Since it was just me and my wife—no relatives, thank Patterson—I got her a nice teddy, and, as Wednesday would doubtless put it, reassured myself of my masculinity. I got Murray a new hat, and he got me an X-Box 360. Since I had already gotten one, I gave it to Pat. Pat got a copy of Sonic Rush from his parents. I got myself frickin' drunk on eggnog, and a copy of Wedding Crashers from my wife.

That said, the Christmas ornaments are, as usual, taking forever to come down. I'm not sure how to spend new year's, though. I don't want to go out, as it's frickin' cold in New York this time of year. I was planning to stay at home with the leftover eggnog and watch the Naruto marathon, while listening to increasingly obscure bands I downloaded from iTunes. I am the very model of a modern major lanlord.

I know the Conrads are going to a local Baptist Church, and "Miss Bliss", upstairs, is going to "get drunk and bone some guy", as she told me earlier while handing over the rent. As I understand it, she's a camwhore as a small way of living.

Bender: That's what she said! WHOOO.

Good night, and good luck.

I was up on the roof, chasing increasingly inane theories for Ray's
murder, when the Conrad kid came bursting through the door, which I had
left open. They saw me, and immediately ducked behind one of the ducts.
(Heh.)

I waited a few minutes. When nothing happened, I walked over to the
duct. It was shaking and sobbing slightly, so I reached into my pocket
for the handkerchief I always carry around, and dropped it on the other
side of the vent. After a few moments, it blew its nose with a loud
hooting sound.

"Want to talk about it?" I said as gently as I could. My father is a
pediatrician. I'll have to call him and ask him to calm down unruly
kids. I remember standing there hundreds of times as he managed to get a
screaming, terrified lad of eight to let go of his mother's
bell-bottoms, snop sniffling, eat a popsicle, and then he'd jab a hollow
metal tube into their arm and take their blood. Since he was telling
them a funny story about a lion, an elephant, and a rabbit who walked
into an ice cream salon, they never noticed.

"SomekidsatschoolweremakingfunofmecauseI'maherm" he(as I later learned
they preferred) blurted out.

I settled back against the duct. Hermaphrodites were rare, but no rarer
than, say, a black person with hazel eyes. As such, they were a prized
commodity among fur fetishists, who had plenty of forums dedicated to
them. Surprisingly, androgynous herms, such as Pat here, were largely
ignored in favor of futanari; girls with penises. The ones who did like
AndryHerms were rabid, though.

I recalled the Conrads when they moved in several months ago; a young
couple with a reticent, slightly sulky child of indeterminate gender. I
had only caught a few glimpses of him since, and today was the first
time I learned that he was a herm. His parents seemed a little stressed;
it's not easy to find skirts with carefully-concealed flies in this
city. Better chance in San Francisco.

"Well, Pat, you just have to not let them get to yo-"

"I know that," he cut me off. I peeked, and saw that he was looking at
his hand. It closed into a tiny fist. "I mean, my mind knows it, but it
still hurts."

It occured to me that all really he needed was a hug. And I gave it to
him. He fell asleep, and I took him downstairs. His mother said thank
you so much, we've been looking for him all over--won't you come in and
have some tea? I declined; after all, I had to put up the Christmas
decorations.

^I thought it was appropriate, in a morbid way.

Ahem.

After typing up the previous post and staring at the "Published Successfully" message for a while. I grabbed my jacket and called Murray; he retired twenty years ago, but he still had to have some connections. After all, I had never seen him swear at his parking tickets.

It seems amazing, in retrospect, that I was even thinking properly. I suppose I was numb, and moving automatically. Which is strange, because I've never had the police come in with warrants to search one of my tenant's apartments before. Yeah, I know, New York, but it's true.

At the station, I wait quietly on a bench while Murray makes miracles. Probably look like some guy bailing his son out. After all of 6 minutes, he comes out, and Det. Green ushers me into the interview room.

The door stays open.

Green hands me coffee, two sugars, stirred, not shaken. As opposed to me, who is shaken as a dry martini, and can feel the bile rising up my throat. It doesn't get any better when I find out what happened to Stoney.

Reynard "Ray" Greenleaf-the name Gavin Gunhold on the lease agreement was false, as I suspected-was in his early thirties. A wolf-fur, he had been arrested several times for possesion and dealing, nickle-and-dime stuff. A few years ago, he moved into my building. Then he went quiet, until his body was left in front of the Smith in a cardboard box. Since it was a potential bomb, they called the police. After identification of the contents-I am told the officers responsible will have nightmares for years-his pieces were sent to the ME. He was sapped and paralyzed by an aerotal injection of something with too many constonants, and slowly amputated without aesthetics or sealing the wound. Whoever had killed him had been nice enough to line the box so that no blood would leak out.

Green reaches around the doorframe and hands me a bucket to retch in. "We think it was a hate crime," he says one of the times I come up for air.

"No, really, ya think? He was tortured, dismembered, and shipped, postage due, to an augmentation institute!"

Green leans back. "What we want to know, Mr. Paxton-"

"Jake."

"-is what your intrest is in this."

"He owes me money."

Green cracks a smile.

"There was a time when any person who was a guest of a great lord was under their protection up until they left or were thrown out. A host being remiss in these was punishable by law. I guess...I see myself as a sort of great lord, and I want to find out what happened to one of my guests."

"Had any experience in investigating homicides?"

"Good a time as any to start."

He sighed and stood up. "C'mon, I'll escort you out."

"What about Murray?"

"He's enjoying the company of a Magnum in his old office."

"The gun?"

"No, he left some champagne in there after a party last month."