Prompt of the Month - December 2020

TAGS: M/F, Hyper, Expansion/Growth, Damned Furrehs

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Of all the things for his grandfather to leave him in their will, a virtual pet was probably not the first one that William would’ve bet on, nor the second, nor would it probably be on the list at all. The old bastard had never been one for electronics, but he did have a keen eye for collector’s items; Bill recalled the many hours he spent perusing through the “Grand Archives”, as the old guy called them, always with his grandad by his side to explain what everything was, ready to chime in with a bit of history pertaining to whatever his grandson happened to take an interest in at any time. The guy had everything, from exceedingly rare LPs, to obscenely valuable trading cards, and even precious jewelry that had mysteriously vanished just before his death, presumably to hide the fact that they probably belonged to a series of foreign countries who would very much like them back; this, among many other things, was why William found it beyond strange that he had left him something of seemingly no value. Sure, the general consensus amongst internet dwellers who had never actually laid hands on one was that they were the best thing to have ever happened to the world of virtual entertainment; just plug the device into your computer and it would use up some of its processing power to project a 3D hologram of your pet, complete with a rudimentary AI that supposedly got a lot better with each release. It would appear, however, that no one had ever really seen one of these things, much less had evidence that they existed beyond newspaper clippings and business registries; online auctions never seemed to have any units for sale, and the company that apparently designed and produced them had long-since gone bankrupt, a victim of the market crash of the late Aughts. It had become one of those urban myths, or internet legends, one of the things that people totally remembered and absolutely, positively existed, but for which no evidence could ever be provided.

Until that day.

While the rest of the family were busy drawing up plans for what they would do with whatever piece of the Archives had been bequeathed to them, William chose to wait for a few days before heading to the legal office. He must’ve read through that letter a hundred or so times, and yet, for the life of him, he couldn’t make sense of what it was trying to tell him. Amidst the technical jargon and mandatory legalese, there was a small note left behind by his grandfather himself, who insisted that William be delivered a very specific message before he be allowed to claim his part of the inheritance:

“To my dearest William, I leave behind what is, perhaps, my greatest investment yet. It wasn’t the best of choices, nor was it the wisest one, but it is one I do not regret making, and would do it all over again.

I recall fondly the days we spent sorting through my garbage, so I apologize if it seems like I’m stiffing you, at least in comparison with the rest of the family. Rest assured, whatever it is they get, they will never appreciate it as much as you did. It’s money to them. But to you, I leave something far greater, something with far more significance than even you could imagine; I can only hope that you do not think ill of me for having hidden this from you for all this time. Believe me when I say, I did so with a heavy heart, and it is, perhaps, the one regret I take to my grave. Perhaps one day we might meet again, and if so, I can only hope you accept my apologies.

In the meantime, please, accept the greatest gift I could think to give you.

With love,

Grandad”

Sentimentalism aside, as soon as William got done with wiping the tears off his face he was left with a mixture of confusion and bewilderment; he had never expected to be given anything of note from the collection, nor did he even have the room for it, but for his grandfather to leave a note like that, he would’ve expected something more… significant. A family heirloom, perhaps, maybe some sort of revelation about his ancestry, a savage secret that would turn his life upside down; instead, he got a prototype, homegrown version of these weird Japanese pocket pet things that were all the rage a few years back, except more processor-hungry. It was maddening trying to come up with a reasonable explanation, hence why he didn’t just collect on it right away; he had to give it a reason, had to make sense of it… but how? There was no sense, nor would he be able to come up with any even if he tried, so there was no point in trying to squeeze blood from a stone. A good week after he received the letter, the young man presented himself to the lawyer’s office and gave them the letter, after which he received a large, taped-up cardboard box. Something rattled inside, so he made sure not to move it around too much while placing it on the front seat of his car, almost tripping over himself when trying to get it into his apartment.

Once inside, it was simply a matter of unpacking his gift and finding out what lay within. The contents only raised more questions though: multiple articles and clipped news pieces about the rise and fall of “Dorden Electronics”, the company responsible for the virtual pet that had been bequeathed to him, as well as a sheaf of papers that appeared to be technical specifications for the product. Most of the stuff was completely incomprehensible to him, being a lit major and all, but there was something at the bottom that peaked his interest: a certificate for a software engineering degree from a university he had never heard of before, signed to one Benjamin C. Simmons.

His grandfather.

Suddenly possessed of a renewed, frenzied curiosity, William went back to the previously discarded paperwork and poured through it, hoping to find what he was looking for. There, written on the corner, there was the name again: BC Simmons. Over yonder, on what appeared to be a payroll print-out, Benjamin Charles Simmons. His grandad’s name, repeated all over the place, every document pointing towards him again and again, all of it seemingly arranged so that he’d remove page after page from the stack of papers until, somewhere two thirds in, he found a photograph. It was old, old enough that the colour had mostly faded, but it showed his grandfather, much younger than he had been the last time he saw him, along with a similarly-aged man. The two stood side by side with one another, arms wrapped around their shoulders, and were smiling warmly enough that William had to bite back tears again; he remembered that smile, he’d seen it far too many times before, and now never would again. But that was definitely his grandad, together with who he could only assume was either the founder or owner of Dorden Electronics; indeed, a quick look at the back of the photo revealed something written a long time before in blank ink:

“DE Opening Day

15/05/1977

To a bright future, and brighter endeavours”

It wasn’t his grandfather’s handwriting.

There was a lot to process here, and William had to sit down to stop his head from spinning. Suddenly, some things made a great deal of sense, and others… not so much. His grandad’s mysterious source of wealth could probably be explained by him having been part of a very successful business venture in the past, along with smart investments along the way, which themselves could go a long way to shed a light on how he always managed to find the time to do whatever he damn well wanted and the rest of the family joked that he hadn’t “worked a day in over thirty years”. But why did he never think to tell him about the time where he created rudimentary AI? It certainly would’ve been something that even a younger version of himself would’ve loved to hear about, and surely his grandad had to have had some fond memories of it, this box was proof of it! The signals were mixed, William’s thoughts even more so, and he decided to get up and splash some water on his face to help him get back to reality.

Once back by the box, he dug through a few more shreds of paperwork to find… something that vaguely resembled a really bulky hard drive. It didn’t seem to have any similar ports though, not that he would know; as much as it pained him to get someone else involved in this, he had to call a friend over to see if he could find a way to either install that big, bulky box into his personal computer or… whatever it was it was supposed to do. Two hours later, he was facepalming and rubbing his temple as his friend Jack practically squealed with delight upon seeing the “priceless artifact” that William had been given, extolling its virtues and singing praises unto both it and its new owner, reassuring Bill that what he had been bequeathed in the will was less a piece of software and much more a landmark in computing history! William, meanwhile, had to keep himself from saying something he’d regret later; as much as he was happy that his friend was happy, he hadn’t called them over so they could gush over his dead grandpa’s belongings, something he was quick to remind them at the earliest convenience, and with only a few stern words. Clearly sensing that he had almost crossed a line, Jack went to work finding a way to adapt the box to his friend’s computer, in silence that time.

What they had initially believed would be a “quickie” turned out to occupy most of the rest of the day, in between multiple runs back to Jack’s house to get the necessary equipment, at least two hours of digging through the technical documents in order to make sure they weren’t seriously misunderstanding what they were looking at, and finally an emergency trip to an electronics store to buy some soldering equipment. Through all of it, Jack constantly reasserted that they were only being so thorough because, well, it was a thirty year-old piece of hardware that could very well not work at all, and even if it did, it was probably seriously damaged and in dire need of repairs. Even if, by some miracle, it had kept itself in one piece for all that time, extreme caution was still necessary to prevent it from being so much as scratched; William, not wanting to screw up the one opportunity he had to get some answers, sat back and allowed his friend to do whatever was necessary, even fixing up dinner for the both of them. Eventually, just a couple of minutes past ten, Jack began yelling, hooting and hollering that he’d “done it” and how much he couldn’t wait to brag about it to whoever would listen; Bill stormed into his own room to find his computer turned on, the box blinking with multiple hitherto-unseen lights, and a small window on the screen, not unlike a command line,  displaying an ASCII logo with three very familiar words: DORDEN ELECTRONICS INC.

This was it.

“So, do I turn it on?” Jack asked, looking like he would be devastated by a negative response, “I mean, I know you want to, but… yeah, I thought it’d be best to ask.”

And he thought well; William had no intention of turning the damned thing on at any point in the near future, at least not with anyone else around. This was something his grandfather had left for him, not anyone else, and judging from what the papers in the box revealed, he most likely intended for whatever was stored in that thing to be for his eyes only.

“I apologize, but… I’d rather do it myself.”

For a moment it looked like Jack was going to protest; he certainly moved in a way that seemed to indicate he was going to say something with a finger raised in the air, but apparently thought twice before pushing that boundary. With a sigh, he acquiesced, rubbing both of his eyes and loudly complaining about how much work it had been, then asking if his pal happened to have something “stiff” lying around. Being a teetotaler himself, all William could do was raise an eyebrow and wait until the awkwardness grew strong enough for the guest to apologize and excuse himself.

“Just… call me when you take a look at it, alright?” Jacked practically begged before leaving, “No one really knows how those things operate, so it’d be great to be one of the lucky few, yaknow? Gimme a ring!”

Bill nodded and immediately closed the door on his friend, feeling slightly guilty for doing so; after so much work put towards making that blasted thing run on a modern computer, how could he have just declined the request to share? Was it being selfish, or just something to be expected, given the circumstances? Was he even thinking about it because it was worth thinking about, or was this the latent grief infiltrating into his very thought process? Questions like those were exactly why he didn’t want to turn the virtual pet… thing… on until he had a good think about it, and that meant leaving the computer turned on overnight while he had several more hours of rest than normal; it would at least give him enough time to well and truly think about the situation, as he stared at the tiny cracks in the ceiling and occasionally checked how the moonlight splashed against the wall. William didn’t know when he fell asleep, only that it was sometime before sunrise; his bedside clock had been ringing for so long that the batteries were practically drained, and it was a wonder that none of his neighbors had knocked on his door like the last time.

Stretching his legs, Bill got up and went through his morning routine, only then noticing that it was practically noon. Despite the massively skewed sleeping schedule, he was still no closer to finding an answer to his dilemma than he had been before; if anything, he only felt more conflicted about the whole thing, given precisely that he had no answers to give it. The simple solution was obvious, but he didn’t want to go through with it, as something told him that if he just turned the machine on, then that would be it. The last memory of his grandfather, evaporated, spent on what amounted to a decades-old novelty that didn’t find enough purchase to have the slightest presence in the modern world. And that, coupled with the absurdity of being bequeathed a virtual pet system of all things, awakened a certain amount of resentment and anger that he didn’t particularly enjoy feeling towards the old man; he was certain that if the letter was given to him, and the words were indeed sincere, then they had to mean something important… but for the life of him, he couldn’t possibly imagine what they might be.

William ended up pacing around his room after having lunch, occasionally glancing at his PC and moving the mouse just so it would come back from standby mode. He didn’t know why he was doing it, given that it only made the still-open Dorden Electronics screen be even more present in his mind than it was already, but he kept doing it regardless; maybe this was his own way of punishing himself for doubting his grandad… or maybe he was just tired and spun out from a night slept haphazardly and out of hours. Whatever the case, it took until mid afternoon for him to make a decision, and even then it only amounted to sitting at his chair and drawing the keyboard towards him, intent on finding out as much about the program as he could.

It was… old. Ancient, even, compared to modern standards, and a single press of the Enter key later it became clear that the only bit of graphical UI present in the program was the title screen; everything else was comprised of your standard command line, to be expected of a computer program built in the late seventies and early eighties. Navigating through the several menus and sub-menus was exceedingly difficult, especially since some of them weren’t even named properly; William could only assume that what he had been given was some sort of experimental version or dev build (he’d heard those words before), and not something meant for public distribution. It got bad enough that he had to resort to writing down every step he took on a sheet of paper, slowly graphing out a large, ridiculously complex tree that only began to make sense when he took an hour out of his exploration to redraw it properly using a ruler and a protractor. He was certain that anyone more familiar with this sort of computer system would be able to navigate the program without any difficulty, but this was meant for him, and as such he had to figure it out himself, even if it meant working well into dinnertime and having to heat up a pizza after remembering he was supposed to eat things.

By ten at night, William had every option, menu, sub-header and whatever else mapped out (or at least assumed he did after several run-throughs), so he took the opportunity to get back up and arrange the many sheets of paper properly, using duct tape and his wardrobe door. The only thing missing was the red string, given the rambling, scribble-filled nature of his notes; still, they made sense to him… too much sense. He began wondering if he had gone mad at some point, because he was starting to see patterns where he pretty certain there had been none before: names and terminology that repeated themselves, expressions that referred to numeric variables in completely unrelated options menus, even a few passing references to “anatomical integrity” and “real-time acclimation”, whatever those meant. It wasn’t enough for him to make heads nor tails of it, but then again, he wasn’t a software engineer; what was clear was that the only way forward was by using that device the way it was meant to be used, which in his case meant navigating through an unconventional (for him) path in order to reach the “Startup Sequence”.

Once there, Bill groaned as even more options appeared for him to pick from. These ones, however, were arranged in a much more visually appealing format, almost like whoever coded them out was at least trying to make it presentable to the general public; the contents, however, were still puzzling at best: “processor sensitivity”, set to either FALSE or TRUE, an entire section devoted to “personality sub-forms” which William could only assume meant the general behavior of the virtual pet, then a species picker that took him the better part of half an hour to read through before realizing his grandfather had probably been one of the earliest furries in the software world. He chuckled at the notion, so appropriate given his own preferences, and immediately picked the most generic option possible: a vixen. Not that he expected anything more than a cute cartoon fox with some minor anthropomorphic elements, like being able to walk around on its hind legs, but it was funny to imagine the old guy and his friends discussing how great it would be to have a virtual furry waifu or something of the sort; he barely held back his laughter, and had to fight against himself to keep that mental image down.

The processor sensitivity one still bugged him though; surely the hardware should be… sensible to the processor? That was the whole point, wasn’t it, to use processing power to project a hologram? There was always the possibility that he was just a complete idiot who didn’t know what he was doing, but Bill didn’t feel like going into a prolonged search dive just to find out what one specific technical term he’d never heard before meant; he set it to TRUE and moved on, barely reading through the legal disclaimer that took the better part of three minutes to print out properly and refused to be dismissed without him carefully inputting a very specific sentence at the end of it. He could only guess this is what things were like when scroll bars didn’t exist. After that was done, he hit the Y key when prompted, accepted everything, then… waited.

He had expected the box to make some kind of sound, maybe even mimic those modem noises that he’d never personally heard; instead, it just sort of… sat there, while the screen displayed a very slowly-filling progress bar and a series of steps written in technical jargon so impenetrable that Bill had to wonder if it was even legitimate, or some sort of joke on the part of the developers. He waited, then waited some more, before realizing that he was effectively wasting his time and would be better served doing something else; getting out of bed so late had left him feeling painfully awake when he should be wanting to go to sleep, so he resolved to go wash the dishes manually… and when that wasn’t enough to make up for the whole loading time, sweep the floor and clean up his bedroom, then just lie on his bed and stare ahead at the ceiling again, occasionally glancing sideways at the computer screen to see what was happening.

The progress bar filled so slowly that it almost felt deliberate, especially given that his computer was supposed to be top of the line; he had built it precisely for gaming purposes, and it had never given him any issues before, so why exactly it was taking so long to interact with a piece of software that it should be able to fully read in half a second was anyone’s guess. Or, again, maybe this was just his lit major side showing again, and Jack would turn to him and say that wait times like those were perfectly natural and, in fact, to be expected of such “priceless historical relics” as that… big box. It was so boring that it somehow helped him fall asleep on time despite thinking himself unable to, the thought of the program finishing while he was under not bothering him in the slightest.

He woke up at the usual time again, which is to say he looked at his nightstand and saw that it was still ten minutes to seven, muscle memory kicking in when he preemptively disabled the alarm from going off. He felt genuinely rested, and if not for the fact that his computer was still on and the progress bar still visible, that morning could’ve very well been any other day; instead, William had to groan at the fact that the damned thing still wasn’t done, though to its credit, it had reached the 98% mark and was going through whatever it was going through so quickly that he couldn’t even read what the text was. As it turned out, washing up in the bathroom and fixing up breakfast for himself took up just enough time that, when he came back to his bedroom, the process was complete.

The first thing he noticed were the lights on the box. They weren’t flickering anymore, but solid, and somehow brighter than before; they seemed to exude some form of haze directly around them, almost like there was a slight fog in the volume of space immediately surrounding the small box. The screen wasn’t any help for that; all it did was show him the full progress bar, the word COMPLETE in large, bolded letters, and a prompt to ACCEPT or RESET.

“Ominous,” he spoke aloud, chuckling quietly after doing so.

He dragged the chair back to give himself some room, then sat on it and proceeded to stare at the screen for so long that he legitimately forgot why he was doing it. There was no way out of this now, no way that wasn’t ACCEPTing whatever his grandfather had left for him; the device was clearly experimental, it was some sort of internet myth, and it had spiked his friend’s curiosity so much that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Jack to excited, so whatever would come out of it was either going to be nothing short of spectacular… or a complete and utter disappointment. In a way, William sort of preferred for the latter option to be true; what else would be funnier than going through that whole process, only for the damned thing to turn out to be some extremely clunky and barely functional prototype for a fad that stopped being relevant years prior? Now that he thought about it, that would be entirely in-character for the old man, and the more he kept pondering it, the more he convinced himself that it had to be the case: he was going to ACCEPT, the box was going to make some weird whirring noise, and then the whole thing would crash, brick his computer and he’d smile all the way to the repair shop, knowing his grandad had played one final prank from beyond the grave. It was worth the hassle, and with a final chortle and a shaking of the head, William leaned forwards toward the keyboard.

ACCEPT

He hit Enter.

And nothing happened.

“Wow. Fuck you, grandad,” he said, turning his head upwards with the goofiest smile on his face, and the slightest hint of tears on the corner of his eyes, “you just couldn’t help yourself, could you? Goddamnit…”

He wanted to cry, but knew better than to do so; this was a moment for celebration, not grief, because at the very least his computer was still functional! All that his choice had done was turn the completion window into a black one for a few seconds before it simply vanished from the screen altogether. He held his breath for a few seconds, expecting the whole system to just malfunction, but no such thing came to pass… that is, until the bulky box on the table screeched loudly enough for William to jump from his seat and end up falling backwards onto the ground, slamming his head against the carpeted floor. Were he less stunned, he might’ve appreciated the fact that he now knew what “seeing stars” meant, but his mind was more concerned with the ungodly noises coming out of the black box; it was like every single terrible modem noise that he’d spent far too many hours googling for the meme value wrapped together, multiplied tenfold and then sent down a paper shredder, combined with some sort of infernal wailing of the damned and the gnashing of teeth of some unknowable demon. Somewhere above him, his upstairs neighbor was screaming at him to quiet down, quickly followed by the downstairs one hitting their ceiling with the handle of a broom; if only it were that simple, William would’ve done it already, but given he could barely take his hands off his ears without collapsing, there wasn’t a lot he could do there.

Then, just as quickly as it started, it stopped, leaving behind the faintest echoes of its existence (or perhaps just the ringing of abused ears). William, still on the floor, waited for a few minutes before daring to take his hands off his head, then allowed himself to look in the general direction of that hellbox. Just as he suspected, the lights were blinking at an insanely fast pace, cycling through colours that he hadn’t ever seen them display, mostly hues of red and orange that struck him as familiar for… whatever reason. It wasn’t until a small port opened on the side of it, and a large projection of light beamed out of it, that the young man put two and two together and finally understood what was going on: the process hadn’t failed, and the virtual pet was now being constructed.

William had spent so much time worrying about the damned thing that he completely forgot that it was supposed to create an interactable hologram of your pet of choice; of course it had to find a way to project it somehow, though why exactly it had to make that ungodly noise was still a massive question mark. Maybe it had to connect to the internet, somehow? But if that was the case, why did it… oh, nevermind that, it worked and that’s what mattered. William scrambled back to his feet and gave it a wide enough berth that he could be sure he wouldn’t interfere with the creation process; he didn’t know whether the box had to be moved around for the hologram to follow him or if it had its own freedom of movement (however that was supposed to work), but he did know that it was best for him not to get in the way. With extreme caution, he removed everything he could from around the area where the light was being projected, and as soon as he kicked one of his pencils away, the soft red glow instantly turned blue. Off to his side, a new window opened: another progress bar, this time reading DIGITIZATION and progressing… quite a bit faster than the last one.

William didn’t really know what to expect. He barely knew what the software was supposed to do, let alone how it was supposed to do it; he hadn’t considered whether it would work like a 3D printer and “make” a hologram from the bottom up, or if it would just project it fully done once it was complete. As it turned out, neither of these were the case; rather, the blue glow suddenly manifested some sort of hazy mist in the general shape of a human body, with just barely identifiable limbs and a head, a mist that grew more solid and defined as the progress bar was filled. It took William a shamefully long time before he realized that what he was seeing was the hologram; it was simply coming into focus properly. He stood back, bringing his chair with him, his eyes growing wider the more well-defined the virtual pet became. He had been joking when he theorized that his grandad was one of the earliest furries in the software world; as it turned out, he might’ve been completely right.

What he was seeing in front of him was, at least in theory, a fox, just one unlike any he’d actually seen in real life before. It wasn’t a small, quadrupedal vulpine with a knack for destroying upholstery and somehow combining the best and worst aspects of canine physiology and feline psychology, nor was it anything remotely resembling what an actual fox was supposed to look like; rather, it was a humanoid, one that just so happened to carry enough vulpine traits that someone looking at them would be able to identify them as such. Honestly, there was no way for William to describe it beyond pointing to it and slapping a large “Anthro” tag on it before carrying on, though he seriously doubted he’d have the mental fortitude to ignore the kind of “pet” that the software was producing for him.

“Grandad, you fuckin’ horndog…” he mumbled, unable to take his eyes off the proverbial prize, seriously considering whether or not what was going on was remotely ethical. It was supposed to be actual AI, right? It could actually… think, right?

Whatever the case, i-she was clearly designed to titillate, and did so with frightening efficiency. The vixen was what one might call “conventionally” attractive, with just the right proportions and curves to attract any eye that might be interested in such things, along with a hand-filling pair of breasts and a perky rear that, for whatever reason, William felt an immense need to either squeeze or slap. She wasn’t moving, and yet her body still betrayed a certain amount of grace, like each step would become a beautifully-coordinated sashay capable of dominating whichever room she happened to be in. The vixen was, all in all, drop dead gorgeous, and William was suddenly beset by a lot of uncomfortably sexual thoughts that he hadn’t expected to have in a situation like that.

With the hologram complete and now fully in focus, movement could finally happen; almost as if a pause button had been hit, the vixen went from T-posing to standing normally, shaking her head and body like she was trying to get water off of it. Nothing came off (and nothing could, come to think of it), but she did take a few seconds to look around and get her bearings, long enough that William was left to wonder if that creature was indeed sentient as the stories would have it. He had serious questions over the validity of those claims, given that his computer was no super machine capable of running an artificial mind… but the way that she was moving was… too fluid. Too real. Like she was actually there, and not just a holographic projection of a bunch of variables running through decades-old hardware. Was she actually there?

“Oh, hello!” she said, her voice surprisingly peppy and cheerful, after somehow missing the other person in the room until just then, “I didn’t see you! Goodness gracious, how long has it been, Ben?”

Ben.

That was not his name.

That was his grandfather’s name.

“I’m… I’m not…” William stumbled over himself, fighting against his own tears for the sake of not making a fool of himself, “I’m Ben’s grandson. William. Ben i-”

“Oh,” the vixen interrupted him, looking sideways at the computer monitor. Her eyes darted to the date almost immediately, after which her expression dropped just as quickly as the realization hit her, “oh…”

“Yeah, sorry, but…” - heavens above, what was he supposed to say? Why did his grandad do this to him?! - “He left me this… you… that thing, the box? He left me the box in his will,” he quickly rattled out, “and I’ve been trying to turn it on for about two days now. I had no idea that it even worked at all, much less that-”

“That I’d be in here?” the vixen completed his sentence, “Yeah, figures. Ben always was one for japes. Did he ever tell you about the one time he hid a coin inside his bu-”

“I do not want to hear this.”

“Oh, right, sorry!” the vixen apologized, seemingly unaware that it wasn’t anger that motivated William’s snappy comeback, but deep, deep embarrassment and awkwardness, “Anyway, now I’m here! It’s been… oh jeez, it’s been a long time, do they even make more of my projector anymore?”

“I… don’t think they made any of you at all” - the young man approached his bed, slightly more at ease with the idea that he had a sentient, holographic, anthropomorphic vixen inside his room… or at least as much at ease with it as he could be - “The projectors are kind of an urban legend nowadays. Tons of people claim to have seen one, but no one can produce any evidence at all. I haven’t even found anything on eBay or Ama-”

“What’s eBay?”

Her question was asked so innocently that William couldn’t help but wonder if it was a deliberate attempt at a joke. Only after giving it a moment’s thought did he remember that she probably hadn’t been active since at least the eighties.

“Alright, sit down,” William sighed, “how long has it been since you were last turned on?” - poor choice of words - “I mean, uh, when’s the last time you were projected?”

“December sixth, nineteen seventy-nine,” the vixen instantly replied.

“Oh boy, this is gonna take a while…”

What followed was an uncomfortably long several hours where William tried his best to get the vixen up to speed on… just about everything she missed for the past forty or so years. To her credit, she interrupted only once to clarify what was meant by “furries”, at which point she learned better than to induce a tangent; by the end, it was getting close to noon and his stomach was growling, while part of him wondered whether or not a creature such as that one even ate anything beyond electricity (assuming that’s how it worked, he was no engineer). He capped the speech off with an attempt at summarizing everything that had happened in the past year, which itself took the better part of half an hour, starting with murder hornets, taking a detour to massive wildfires and then the reason why he was even indoors on a weekday. The vixen nodded along, appeared shocked whenever it was appropriate, and even went “Hmm” and “Huh-huh” at the correct moments; it was hard to tell if she was actually sentient or merely a very good replica of what a sentient AI might look like, but at the end of the day, William wasn’t nearly educated enough to tell the difference, so he opted to go with the former. It was better on his head.

“So, that’s about it. What about you?” he asked of her, leaning back against the wall and doing his best to ignore the gurgling coming from his stomach.

“What about me?” - the vixen seemed genuinely surprised by the question - “I’m here to serve you, as I was Ben. It’s… what I was made for.”

“I thought you were supposed to be an AI though.”

“I am. What does have to do with anything?”

There were a lot of complicated ethical dilemmas brought up by that simple statement, most of which made William curse how his education as a lit major let him formulate each and every one with a disturbing amount of clarity. He had no intention of taking advantage of someone like that, and if the alternative was just turning her off and going on with his life, he’d sooner take it than… whatever the other option was.

“Yes, but, if you’re sentient, and an actual AI,” he insisted, “then surely you’d have other desires than just… serving me?”

“Oh, I do,” the vixen stated matter-of-factly, “but I don’t think we know each other well enough for me to get down to those yet.”

Subtle. Very bold. And so extremely charged that William felt his cheeks light up like a Christmas tree as his new companion kept looking at him like she’d just said the most normal thing ever.

“Frankly, me and Ben had to go through quite a lot before I figured he was ready to commit to a proper relationship” - he didn’t like where this conversation was going, especially with how wistfully the vixen was recounting things - “He was young, excitable, and he had a hell of a lot more ambition than he did wisdom; imagine my surprise when one day, I just… poof! Just like that, I come into being, and who would I see but Ben and Carl, staring at me like I was some sort of ghost! Scared them right out of their skulls… at least until they took a better look and immediately began flirting with me” - she scoffed - “No finesse.”

William really, really wanted this conversation to end. The last thing he needed to know was about his grandfather’s sexual escapades.

“Still, he simmered down after that, and we got together some time later. There were some issues, of course; we didn’t have the hardlight module until much later on, so for most of the early months we had to make due with just one another’s presence. Once the damned thing was installed, then oh boy, let me tel-”

“Please don’t.”

His response was more of a squeak than anything, warranting a flinch on the vixen’s part, followed by a prolonged bout of laughter that left her doubled over. She tried apologizing in between wheezes, but only made herself cackle even harder, a process that took too long for William’s liking; he was about to get up and leave to fetch himself a sandwich just to be able to get away from everything when he felt something tug at his shirt… or someone. Truth be told, he hadn’t put two and two together until that happened, but he at least recognized that “hardlight” might very well be as literal as it sounded; despite the obvious impossibility, the holographic vixen was touching him, holding him back with just enough strength to make it seem as if she was truly there. She was warm to the touch, soft, and though her composure had been broken by the laughing fit, remained as welcoming a sight as ever.

“I’m sorry, honey, I really am; I assume most people aren’t as open about experimenting as we were back then, again, I’m sorry. Listen, I’ll make it up to you, alright? I know it’s getting a bit late for breakfast, but I figured that I should still get you something to drink to start off your day, am I right?” - William didn’t know what that meant, nor did he know why the vixen’s first reaction after saying it was to climb further onto his bed - “And by the by, call my Tanya. What may I call you?”

“W-William,” he mumbled back, “w-why are y-y-”

“Don’t,” Tanya cooed, “just enjoy, alright?”

Oh, so that’s where things were going. The young man could only sit there and watch as his apparent new lover moved closer to him, bringing one of her legs over his and straddling a rather intimate part of his body. He didn’t feel anything… special, though that was probably all the fur in the way; regardless of that, she was clearly enthusiastic about it, given how quickly she splayed herself over him and brought her face uncomfortably close to his. Uncomfortably? That wasn’t it, not really; she was warm to the touch still, and her mere presence seemed to sell the idea of closeness and intimacy, like the vixen had been tailor-made for those long, cold, lonely nights where one wished for someone else beside them. Just, well, far more sexual in nature.

“Did you, perchance, turn on processor sensitivity?” she suddenly asked, the question taking him by surprise, “Because if you did, then we can totally take this show to a whole new level.”

“I d-did, I think? Why, w-what does it do?”

He… wasn’t sure if he liked that smile. It was equal parts predatory, menacing and alluring, a combination his brain was not ready to process. It didn’t help that her first reaction on learning this was to slide off of him just as quickly as she’d hopped on, looking like Christmas had come early as she excitedly asked for all the specs on his personal computer, eventually forgoing questions altogether when her newest partner took too long to answer. She turned to face the monitor and directly interfaced with his operating system, multiple windows opening and closing without any input from the mouse or keyboard, Tanya’s smile growing wider as she absorbed the information. Only after she was done did she look back, the maniacal grin running from ear to ear far more enticing than it had any right to be.

“Now, I’m pretty sure you’ve noticed this little thing isn’t exactly normal, right?” - the vixen patted the holographic projector, drawing a nod from William - “You see, before the company apparently went tits-up, myself and Ben were hard at work designing something… exciting. Something that would allow me, and others like me, to coexist with hardware architecture as it was improved over time. Are you aware of Moore’s Law?”

That struck a bell, sort of; he still shook his head though.

“Well, roughly put, it states that processing power in computer systems doubles every two years; there’s a lot more nuance to that, but I’m guessing you can understand it that way. Not exactly accurate either, given what I’m seeing here,” she added, looking at his computer, “but you know what? Close enough. And, see, the whole point of the new function wasn’t necessarily to optimize me further, at least not in terms of processing power; no, this was something that I specifically requested… for my own amusement.”

That last word dripped with so much overt sexuality that William’s pants somehow grew tighter than they were already. Whatever was coming his way was not going to be pretty, in the absolute best way possible.

“So, I think,” Tanya wrapped up, “it’s time for me to synch up!”

There was absolutely no indication of what was going to happen when those words escaped her mouth, and what happened next came out of left field so hard that it nearly smacked William unconscious from whiplash. First off, his computer screen turned off, though the main tower was still active; the processor within began to make the kind of noises it usually did when turning on, the fans activating at maximum speed as the heat within the casing rose to about as high as it could go without damaging the components. And, as a result, Tanya began to grow.

Not grow as in becoming taller, or aging to become a more mature sort of lover, matching her “biological” age with her chronological one. Rather, the first thing to happen was the vixen bringing her hands up to her chest, which ceased being average and normal almost instantly afterwards. There was no other way to describe it, her breasts were growing, rising like dough as they took up progressively more room on her torso, hanging lower and lower while somehow managing to keep their perfect teardrop shape almost completely unaltered. William barely had enough time to process what was going on when Tanya brought one of her hands down to her hips, which, sure enough, had begun to widen to match the fatter pair of thighs she was developing, as well as a much rounder and softer pair of asscheeks right next to them. Her assets were bloating, inflating with extra mass, carrying with them the sort of heft, bounce and sway that he had only ever seen in lewd artwork that he denied ever so much as thinking about, and made sure to wipe clean from his browser history at every opportunity despite living alone. It was made worse when the vixen’s mouth opened, and the sort of moaning noises that came out of it almost immediately afterwards were loud enough that his neighbors shouted at the two to keep it down. There William was forced to sit, staring as Tanya took up more and more space in the middle of his room, until finally her transformation was complete, and the vixen allowed both arms to fall to her side as she recovered her breath.

The results were… hard to describe, at least for him. Her tits were the “worst” of the bunch, so big that each one could probably cover her entire torso just by themselves, hanging just over her knees; together, they jutted out a couple of feet from each side of her, giving the young woman the sort of exaggerated backboob that only furry art could ever hope to achieve with that sort of elegance. Admittedly, focusing on her breasts when looking at her from behind would be difficult, given the pair of door-wide cheeks she was carrying, or the wide, absurdly-flared hips complementing the deliciously thick thighs just below them. If anything had ever sold “hyper”, it was Tanya, right there in front of him; gods above, the amount of jiggling…

“You know, I think this is pretty nice,” she finally spoke up again, giving one of her tits an experimental heft; it slapped against her chest loudly enough to startle him, “and I managed to synch myself all the way to eighty-five!”

“Eighty what?!” William blurted out, his surprise at the statement somehow powerful enough to overcome the wave of arousal that had washed over him.

“Well, yeah, can’t just keep doubling up until I’m up to modern standards, I wouldn’t even be able to fit in the room!” the vixen stated, matter-of-factly, “Though, if you’d like me to, I could try for another o-”

“No, no, it’s fine! It’s absolutely fine, no need, thanks!”

He didn’t know what was worse, the fact that he absolutely loved what he was seeing or that he wanted it to keep going until it could go no longer; it was no secret that he was a lover of all things big (or rather, no secret to him, at the very least), but to suddenly be given someone like Tanya felt so convenient that he was convinced he had to be hallucinating in some way. Perhaps he was dreaming, perhaps he hadn’t actually woken up and the moment he tried to feel any of those soft curves he would open his eyes and find himself staring at an empty room with a computer screen displaying an error message. That seemed far more likely than the sequence of events that led him to where he was at that point in time; wouldn’t be the first time he had a lucid dream, after all.

However, no such thing would come to pass, and it was a testament to his immense ability to be a killjoy for himself that he didn’t know whether or not that was a bad thing or the best thing to have ever happened to him. Sensing a certain level of confusion and doubt, Tanya seemingly decided to take matters into her own hands and help her newest partner “decide” in the only way she could: by turning towards him so he could get a good look at her new body, then slowly inching closer to the bed, one sashaying step at a time. Some part of William urged him to tell her to stop, to stop himself from enjoying the bountiful repast that was about to smother him underneath several pounds of curves; that part was tiny, if loud, and was thus very quickly smothered itself by the rest of him, who only wished to enjoy the hallucination while it lasted. If it were to end and send him careening back to the world of the living, then at the very least he was going to enjoy himself for as long as he could; hence why his hands were already outstretched when the vixen climbed onto the sheets, murring loudly and offering him a pair of bedroom eyes that made his pants feel uncomfortably tight.

Not that he had a lot of time to focus on that, given that everything below his waist was very quickly enveloped by a pair of breasts big enough to nearly cut off circulation, leaving him feeling like his legs were being enveloped by the softest set of sheets in existence. It was almost wondrous how the vixen managed to move with those weights attached to her, especially when she was bent over so much that he could see both her tits and asscheeks wobbling with each motion, the deep, cavernous cleavage practically begging for him to stuff something into it, didn’t really matter what. Inch by inch, she moved closer, until he could feel her fingers tugging at the bottom of his shirt; he offered no resistance when Tanya pulled it over his head, nor when her soft pads met his chest and gently pushed him down onto the bed, leaving him flat against it and looking up. He did nothing to protest against the vixen straddling his more private areas, nor against her starting to grind against them, all while expertly removing his pants as well; she was clearly experienced in doing so, though for his own sake, his brain refused to let him finish that thought. Barely five minutes passed between her completing her transformation and finishing her work with William, with the latter now being fully nude, his shaft firmly lodged between a pair of cheeks that seemed fully intent on gripping the life out of him, and his chest being slowly swallowed by a rack that was so impossibly large that it had to be fake, it had to be a dream… and yet, he was still there, and it certainly felt quite real. He didn’t want to believe that his grandad had left him a fully sentient kink fulfillment machine, but there was really no other way around it: Tanya was, indeed, a real thing, and this that she was doing? It was actually happening.

“Should I fill up, by the way?” the vixen asked him, the question obvious, its intent more so, “I can sacrifice a synching cycle for it if you want me to, it’s part of my programming!”

All William could do at that point was nod and hope that his partner knew what to do from there. He didn’t have to wait long; barely ten seconds after he agreed to the proposal, he suddenly felt the weight on his chest growing significantly heavier, along with both of Tanya’s tits visibly bloating, gaining several inches in diameter in such a short time that they literally squeezed the air out of his lungs. It didn’t stop there either; whether it be because she lost control or decided to take it a further step beyond, Tanya let loose a loud, yowling moan as her bust continued to grow outwards, spilling out from over her lover’s body and practically oozing onto the bed around him, leaving William literally buried under a set of milkers that now gushed with cream, and herself stuck with a pair of tits big enough to cover most of her body down to and just over her knees. She wouldn’t be getting up any time soon, that was for certain; it was a shame the same couldn’t be said about her ass, but it was understandable, he couldn’t demand everything of her. Besides, his head was poking out from underneath a bust big enough to cover most of his body too, so he couldn’t really complain about it.

Things became blurry after that, probably due to the lack of oxygen flowing to and from his brain, itself owed to the rather large vixen sitting on top of him. He distinctly remembered a lot of bouncing, a lot of movement, and quite a bit of moaning and other noises that were equally undignified; he recalled thinking that he was going to burst, then hearing Tanya say it for whatever reason, along with the sounds of wet thwapping and what he could only remember as clapping, though given that their hands were almost permanently intertwined, he couldn’t hazard a guess as to where those claps were coming from. Sometimes his mouth would be occupied, drinking a sweet, thick and deliciously warm fluid coming from somewhere, and atimes it would be taken up by another mouth, another tongue mingling with his, along with moaning and murring of much higher volume. The bed, too, he vaguely remembered making a lot of noises, plus the vague idea that he should get it replaced, though for what reason he couldn’t quite put his finger on. To think, his very first time would not only be with anthropomorphic vixen, but one blessed with the sort of curves and proportions that were the exclusive purview of highly fetishistic artwork; it was a dream come true, hence why it wasn’t really real. That’s why he couldn’t remember any of it, why it got blurry right after he got to the good part: his brain was overloaded trying to come up with an experience that he had very little reference for, and just gave him the vague, idealized version that lacked any sort of juicy details. Soon enough, he’d wake up and find himself alone in his bedroom, begging to be back in his dreamworld.

And so he did. Some indeterminate amount of time later, William resurfaced from whatever pseudo-slumber he had been thrown into, staring directly at the ceiling and feeling like he’d just been thrown down a hillside at terminal velocity. He could barely move, his legs ached something fierce, and breathing came hard and with no insignificant amount of pain; worse yet, he was positively drenched in sweat (or at least he assumed it was sweat), with a particular wetness around his groin betraying how intense his lurid dream was. He barely had time to process everything that had happened, allowing him to feel terribly embarrassed for believing it did occur just before growing despondent at the fact that it didn’t; instead, he chose to busy himself confirming that it hadn’t taken place, firstly by looking to the side and noticing how the black box was still on and projecting some sort of illumination. That was odd, he was almost certain it wasn’t like that the night before… nor was the screen on his computer clear of any progress bar, which should be there waiting for him to be disappointed. Rather, it was on standby mode, which had to mean the program failed and didn’t load properly. Yeah, that had to be it.

It’d be a lot easier for him to confirm his hypothesis if he could actually move and didn’t have his legs seemingly paralyzed from overexertion; what exactly had he done during the night that caused his lower body to stop working, exactly? He struggled to get up, struggled to even flip around like a helpless turtle, and would’ve kept going if not for the sound of something wet splashing on the floor somewhere near the door to his room.

“Oh, goddamnit!”

The voice was familiar, but it shouldn’t be, because its owner didn’t really exist. He looked up, hoping to find nothing, only to see what were unmistakably a pair of breasts jutting out from an open door, pressed against both sides of the frame and very clearly stuck there, unable to move. Whoever, or whatever was carrying them attempted to force them through and into the bedroom proper, but each squeeze only brought with it gushes of a white liquid that flew from the hand-sized teats capping those colossal mounds.

“William, could you please give me a hand?” a woman who he remembered as Tanya asked him, her voice fraught with worry, “I’m afraid I may have bitten off a bit more than I could chew, and I may need a hand here…”

He didn’t want to consider the possibility that it had actually happened. It was too good to be true, almost literally, and for him to think otherwise was not only dangerous, but downright irresponsible. How was he supposed to live with a vixen that big? Was he expected to tend for her, take care of her, to extract her eagerly-produced milk and sell it as an enterprise? Because he could absolutely see himself doing that, and he hated the fact that he loved that idea so much; then again, he hated the thought of hating it even more, because why wouldn’t he want to go through with it?

“William!” Tanya shouted, louder this time, “I’m serious! Get off your butt and come help me, or else our lunch is gonna get cold; I am not gonna eat off my own tits, so get up and help me through the door, please!”

He was smiling like an idiot. It was real. It was real, Tanya was real, everything was real, and it was just day one of their new life together. The experience was beautiful, though it would’ve been better if he hadn’t taken such a beating that his body refused to work properly; he’d probably end up looking like a bodybuilder before the year was out at that rate.

“Coming!” he called out, doing his best to wriggle his toes, “Just as soon as my legs work!”