FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The network was never quiet, but it was a sound Trevor found comforting. The sound of information moving around the world, some of it growing faint as it disappeared in the vastness of space. If he strained, Trevor could even make out the background sounds of the observatories, spread around within the Kuiper belt.

This was his world. His place of comfort. Here he could control what happened, he could even reduce the sound until he almost no longer heard it, if he wanted. He didn't; he liked the sound, the structure of it. The order in the seeming chaos. After half a day in New Orleans, Trevor needed this sound, the control over his environment.

He let a breath out, opened his eyes, and summoned screens. He pulled the information he had on Bobby Power and displayed it. His company, his residence, his family; only a father.

Trevor brought up a new screen and went searching for everything on Logan Power.

There were a lot of crimes. Almost exclusively so. Starting when he was thirty, Logan Power threw himself in a life of swindling others. How he managed to stay ahead of the police with the number of consent crimes he was wanted for was beyond Trevor. He was tempted to look for Logan's father, maybe the man would be able to give him information on his son's whereabouts, except that was the police's job; or something he could do when he was working. He made a note to bring it up with his boss.

He filed Logan's screen away and returned to Bobby's.

He found the fertility clinic he was born at, his childhood information, inferred from his education results and medical visits until he was ten, since that was when his implant became active. Then tracing his life was more precise, his education result matched those of his peers, he entered the work market once he was able to, moved out of his father's house and into corporate housing, worked, started his company.

What Trevor expected from an Orr citizen. So why had Bobby disappeared? He'd had a perfectly normal life. Had stayed away from crime. So why lie about his success?

Trevor frowned at what he saw. Bobby had an average life.

He pulled Logan's file back out and set it next to Bobby's. He lined up the dates as best he could. How did someone have a normal life when his father couldn't be found by the law? There were no indications Bobby had been on the move throughout his childhood and yet the law hadn't been able to find his father who, according to what Trevor saw, would have spent sixteen years in the same location? That made no sense.

He went back to Bobby's youth and looked at what was there. His learning curve was like his peers... Trevor brought up the corporate statistics, found those for the years Bobby studied and placed them side by side. Bobby's scores weren't like his peers, they were identical to the average. There was no way anyone could hit the average on every score within the education program, not without purposely trying.

Or falsifying the results.

Why would Bobby want to falsify his scores?

"Wrong question." Bobby wasn't old enough to even know there was an average. "Why would Logan Power want to falsify Bobby's scores?"

Trevor filed every screen away and brought up blank ones. He was going to start from scratch and not take anything for granted.

* * * * *

The fertility clinic where Bobby was born was accurate information. It was about the only thing that was. The childhood home was falsified, a good job too, but once Trevor started looking for cracks, he found them. Someone had changed the names, the ID tags, replacing the unremarkable father and son who lived there.

Trevor found out why he'd had trouble finding that out, Bobby's ID tag wasn't his original one. He'd had it changed in his teens after it was implicated in his father's con jobs going back years. Someone had then constructed a solid back story for Bobby using the new tag. He'd think it was Bobby himself, to keep people from prying into his life, but Trevor could match some of the codes and methods used to create the false story to other falsification crimes, and while He was willing to believe Bobby had lied about his company and his success, he wasn't willing to believe he was a criminal, not with what else he'd uncovered.

Trevor traced Logan to a medical clinic when Bobby was four. He confirmed Bobby was with his father through the building's sensor net, which had to know who was in a room to adjust the entopic projection as required. The clinic was approved for implantation. So on the surface, this looked like nothing more than Logan taking Bobby so the doctor would have a baseline for their records. Four was extremely young, but some family had multiple baselines done as the child grew up. Some doctors claimed it made for a more accurate result.

Knowing Bobby's past was falsified, Trevor didn't accept what he saw. He found the doctor who had seen Bobby and his father. Accessed the doctor's finances, using his Orr name to avoid setting off alarms, although he felt Uncle glance in his direction. The doctor had received a large payment on that day from an account that no longer existed. Trevor added that to a screen of information to investigate further.

Accessing the clinic's records, he found documentation for the implantation of an eight-year-old raccoon at the exact time when Bobby and his father were the only ones there with the doctor.

He stopped as the implication sunk in.

Bobby had been implanted at four years old.

Who the fuck did that to his son?

There was ample research back from when Implants were first introduced about all the dangers of implanting too early; when too many experiments were done without proper supervision for some extra money. It was a miracle it hadn't killed Bobby.

Or, he'd discovered, more like an organized effort to ensure he didn't die.

He found multiple medical visits in the four years after that, each for a seemingly normal incident, but each time the clinic happened to have an expert in Implants who received a large sum of money matching the visit. Trevor wasn't surprised to find those doctors were later brought to justice under a variety of malpractice charges, but Bobby had never shown up in those. Probably due to his father's intervention.

Then his father vanished and Bobby was carted to a corporate orphanage that, once Trevor was through looking at all the ways they abused their privilege, he was happy no longer existed. Although he suspected its closing had more to do with Bobby's father covering his tracks than any justice. The timing was too suspicious, barely a year after Bobby left it.

Immediately, Bobby was seen by one specialist after another in regards to complications due to his early implantation. The first thing that Trevor noticed, because he was no longer taking anything around Bobby at face value, was that each specialist received a payment after the visit from an account that existed only long enough to make it.

It had to be Bobby's father, but why?

The specialists published reports about his conditions, and as far as Trevor could tell, they were authentic. Bobby did suffer from something called Implant Dissociative Connectivity. A search told him Bobby was the only one suffering from it, which explained why it had never made any of the news sites. A lone man with an implant-related issue wasn't worth being covered.

With the condition came the need for a variety of equipment Bobby had to pay for. Why was he paying for it? This was definitely health-related and should be covered. Only it was unique and had never been brought to the attention of the health department. Something else Trevor would have to look into later. It should have been the first thing the specialists did. Every Orr citizen who suffered from a medical condition should be covered to the point they could have a life. Not just barely live one.

Then there were the semi-regular lawsuits due to his original tag still being used in crimes. All the files were there to show Bobby wasn't linked to it, but it didn't seem to stop some plaintiffs from wanting to drag Bobby in to, what? What did they hope to get? Bobby barely had any money as it was.

Trevor stepped back and looked at the giant list of things Bobby had been forced to suffer through and couldn't figure out if he should be sick or pissed. That Bobby had gone through all that unnoticed was a show of effort from someone Trevor considered evil and a flaw in the corporation. No one should have been able to use it to make Bobby slip through the cracks like this. No one should go unnoticed in such away.

What baffled Trevor, even more, was that Bobby suffered in secret. Why he hadn't asked for his help. Okay, that one was understandable, Trevor Pakesh, inspector, didn't make a lot of money himself. But Nori and Horace were wealthy, and they didn't hide that fact. Had Bobby reached out to them?

Trevor considered contacting them to ask, but if Bobby hadn't, he'd be revealing his secret. Trevor didn't have that right. And maybe the reason he hadn't was simple. Nori and Horace weren't Orr Corp, and they spent a lot of their time out in the solar system. For them to help Bobby would mean passing the information along to others, and Bobby might not want strangers to know. He didn't seem to want his friends to know, so why would he be comfortable with strangers knowing?

A message appeared, relating to the search he'd started on Logan Power. Had he forgotten to stop that? Logan Power had just been arrested by the Akron police department on the multiple warrants for consent crimes. Was this another scam, like the arrest in Wichita? Was this an attempt at drawing Bobby out? Was this why he was hiding?

Trevor got in the Akron department, found the arrest, didn't find any anomalies in it. He looked for the record of the arrest and watched the old man give himself up. He looked older than Trevor expected, his fur was flat, lifeless. His eyes tired, resigned. This didn't look like the man who had screwed over the system for nearly seventy years.

He put in the order to have the man transferred to the New Vegas holding facility and was surprised when it wouldn't go through.

"What are you doing?" Uncle asked.

"I'm getting a criminal transferred so I can question him," Trevor answered, trying to push the order through.

"On what authority?" A desk materialized next to the screen and Uncle sat on the edge of it.

"Mine. Uncle, why are you stopping me? That man is a criminal."

"And we have a justice system to deal with men like him." Uncle took the screen with all the injustice Bobby had suffered and read it. "Why are you doing this, Trevor?"

Trevor glared at the AI. "Really? You're looking at the reasons."

"Let me rephrase my question." Uncle placed the screen back in its place. "Why is Trevor Orr doing this? You went to great length to make sure Bobby Power didn't know him. On what authority is Trevor Pakesh trying to force a transfer?"

Trevor grabbed the screen with the list of crimes Logan Power had committed and flung it at Uncle. "Plenty of those took place in New Vegas."

Uncle caught it and glanced at the list. "None of which Trevor Pakesh is investigating. The last time Logan was in New Vegas was twenty years ago." He tapped the crime in question. The raccoon had swindled fifty socialites by having them buy into the party of the millennia.

"Are you telling me to drop it? Are you, Uncle, telling me I don't have the right to fix a problem in our corporation? You? Who flits about the world tugging and pushing things around to your liking?"

"I don't exist, Trevor." Uncle paused. "Until that changes, I have luxuries you don't. Do you want to involve your family in what amounts to a con artist's life of crime?"

"What if he manages to get away with it again?"

Uncle shrugged. "That's the risk we take when you give other people the reign of their lives and control in the society they build. It won't be perfect and some people will make a living exploiting it."

"You can intervene."

Uncle gave Trevor a look of annoyance. "You know I don't involve myself in petty crimes, Trevor."

"This isn't petty! That man made sure Bobby suffered, he paid doctors to implant him when he was four, to somehow guide how the implant grew so it wouldn't outright kill him then have specialist keep looking after him under the guise of trying to find a solution for I have no idea what reason other than to make sure he never came to our attention so we could devote actual resources to help him! That's not petty, that's evil!"

"And it doesn't put our family at risk. You know I won't make judgments about what people do, Trevor. I don't want to be some god dictating what is right and what is wrong. I'm pretty sure we had something like that before the cataclysm and that it's responsible for it happening."

"I can't just stand here and do nothing!"

Uncle nodded. "I agree, but you need to do it as Trevor Pakesh, since that is who knows Bobby Power. If you bring Trevor Orr in it, you will be sending a message to the world that we consider certain people to deserve special treatment."

"You had no problem giving Theo special treatment," Trevor snapped and regretted the words immediately. "I'm sorry."

"You're frustrated, Trevor, I understand that. But my only concern is your family, you know that. And that means I can't allow you to set a precedent that will snowball into problems down the line." Uncle stood, and the desk disappeared. "And you're smarter than to barrel through this, Trevor. Take a breath and think things through." He waved a hand and the transfer order vanished.

Trevor grumbled as Uncle stepped and vanished too. If he thought he could manage it, he'd ignore him, but Uncle was within the network, and not just acting on it. Whatever Trevor used to try to force the issue, Uncle would counter.

He sent a request to have Logan transferred to his boss, which earned him a 'try again when you're on duty', with a 'stop working and go relax' implied in it.

Since he wasn't going to do that, not with Logan Power right there, right now, and knowing he might vanish again any moment, he contacted the Akron department and scheduled an appointment to speak with Logan. Fortunately, Trevor had many crimes Logan had committed within his jurisdiction.