FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Lopside stared down at the scribbles on the slip of paper on the ground. We were all amazed at the unmistakable similarity between the symbol on the paper and one of three that Lopside has scribed in front of us, but he was looking at the scrap as if held in thrall. Wide eyes and mouth salivating, he looked down at the symbols on the paper. I wondered for a bizarre moment if Lopside of all people could somehow understand what was written on the paper; naturally this was only a vague idea in my head at the time. The idea that information could be transmitted in such a fashion without a voice or a tail or a living body was still nearly beyond me.

Without warning, Lopside launched himself upon the scrap lying on the ground, grabbed it gently with his lips, and made off with it to the other side of the yard. Terrier-face made as if to go after him, but I blocked him with my body as I stepped in front of him. "Let him go."

"He knows something." snuffled Terrier-face suspiciously, peering around my chest because he could not see over me.

Did Lopside know something that we didn't? It seemed likely, given the generation of the odd character on the ground. But how could he? Lopside led the same life that we all did and was not taken from the yard anymore than the rest of us. But it was Lopside also who had opened the gate.

I turned back to the group, all of whom were on their feet save Fat Gut who was still lying exactly where he'd been this entire time. "Let's give him some time." I said, strolling easily back to the place where I'd been lying.

"But, Topsy, what if he destroys that paper?" asked Pink Nose worryingly, "It might be important."

I shrugged, "Even if it was important, we had no idea what it meant. Maybe he will get an idea."

"But the pup can't even talk." Fatty said, settling his huge bulk down about a foot away from the huger Fat Gut. "So what good is it, even if he does figure it out."

My difficulties with teaching Lopside resurfaced in my mind, but I suppressed them. "He'll learn to talk soon enough." I said as the dogs smoothed their dander and sank back into more or less their original positions. "But I don't want to talk about Lopside anymore for now. Let's talk about the gate."

Fat Gut chuffed, apparently wanted to get back into the conversation since we'd all left him behind at the revelation. "The gate problem and Lopside are the same. Tell him to stop opening the damn thing." Fat Gut lifted his head high again and set his many sagging collars to a gentle sway. "Or force him to stop."

Fatty, it turned out was of similar mind as Fat Gut, saying. "There won't be a problem if we can keep a closer eye on him in the future."

Not caring for the one-sided nature the conversation was taking, I said, "But are we sure what exactly is the problem here?"

Pink Nose said, "Well, we can't have dogs going in and out of the fence. The humans would notice."

"And is that a bad thing?" I said, not because it didn't seem natural to keep such a thing secret from the authority figures, but because I wanted to analyze this unique situation fully.

"It is a bad thing because the humans might change the fence so that we can't open it anymore." Pink Nose said with surprising alacrity.

"They can do that, do you think?" I asked.

Then Pink Nose seemed unsure, "Well... They made it, so I assume they can. And they obviously want to keep us inside the fence."

"Alright. That's a good reason." I said, trying to piece this thing together from the most basic bits that we did know. "What about having it open during the night, when they aren't here?"

"It might be a problem rounding up all the dogs every morning..." said Pink Nose thoughtfully.

Of course, if the case was that all of the penned dogs were wandering about that huge space between the buildings, rounding them all up with just three betas - two of which probably couldn't even manage the walking distances required - would be a nightmare. "And that's why we need to keep the gate from opening whenever. But do we want it shut forever?"

Fat Gut snorted, but remained silent. We all knew his opinion already and obviously he didn't feel like reiterating it.

"What about those snacks you found outside?" Asked Fatty curiously. Pink Nose had indeed mentioned the litter we'd found on the way, some of which had crumbs or drops of sweet liquor within their inedible containers. "That might be a good reason to send a dog or two out per night to scavenge."

I half growled in the back of my throat, tilting my nose up, "Ah... I don't know... There wasn't that much food out there. It might not be worth it."

Fatty lowered his ears in dismay, so I added quickly, "But we haven't looked around the place thoroughly yet."

"Yet he says..." chuffed Fat Gut. I ignored him.

"I think we're missing something." said Pink Nose suddenly.

"What is that?" I asked.

"We're assuming... that we can open and close the gate. But we can't. Only Lopside can."

Pink Nose had a good point. Especially since Lopside was as yet such an unreliable asset. "That's true..." and then it hit me, "So we need to figure out how the gate works."

Eyes widened around me. Dizzy and Spinner wagged their tails fiercely, looking up at me. Fatty said, "We can do that?"

I lifted my head higher. "Of course we can!" I barked heartily. "If Lopside can figure it out, then so can we. We're smart aren't we?"

Terrier-face and Fatty looked at each other. I knew that compared to myself and Fat Gut and Pink Nose they felt a bit left out at times. But even Pink Nose looked unsure. "Topsy... Lopside is pretty... odd. I don't know..."

To forestall doubt, I got to my feet. "I think we all need to look at the thing more closely before we decide that we can't understand it." And without anymore words, I began to walk over to the gate.

It was to my credit as Alpha that everyone rose and followed me, even the hefty, turgid Fat Gut; although he only got up, waddled the few steps over to the fence and promptly sat his engorged rump down on the grass before proceeding to lick at his shoulder, insomuch as he could given the vastness of both his neck and upper torso. Pink Nose sat next to me as I gazed up at the gate, trying to divine the mechanism by which it kept us contained in the yard.

The other members of the Talkie were of limited use, Spinner and Dizzy at once grew clearly bored when the gate stood tall and firm as always, unyielding in its answers and looking to a dog's eye barely discernible from the rest of the fence, in fact. Terrier-face and Fatty were with me, but I knew that their natural talents did not happen to lie in this extremity of visual analysis, especially of an inanimate object we all had taken for granted as a part of our natural existence since the beginning.

Fat Gut's opinion in this matter I valued only second to Pink Nose's - and Lopside's if he could've spoken it - but he seemed disinterested in the effort and I could not force him to use his full facilities in deciphering this problem. The gate itself towered overhead, even over my lofty viewpoint and still further over even the atmospheric vantage of humans. Where it began and the fence ended may have been obvious to human eyes, but not to mine, not at the time. The twisted wire of the chain links and the tall straight poles seemed unalterable and seamless in the whole. I took in the fence and the gate as a whole object, one which had been a prominent feature of my landscape for most of my conscious existence. Right then, I tried to focus my attention and hopefully see more than I'd seen before.

Several minutes passed looking at the cold lifeless steel. It was a strain on my yet dog-like sense of time and my ability to concentrate. Slowly I shook my head in frustration.

"It just looks like the rest of the fence..." complained Fatty behind and to my left.

"Perhaps if you look at it a different way...?" I said, but doubt crept into my voice. I realized that simply deciding to try to see things as the visual artist Lopside did might prove entirely pointless.

Pink Nose surprised my by growling a bit. "Well I don't think just looking at it is going to work. So..." The overstuffed labrador reared up a decent height and planted his paws on the chain of the fence. His weight caused him to push it in more than a little and I thought that the pressure on his paws - still pink in some spots - must be uncomfortable. He sniffed frenetically at the fence, and following his cue, I stepped towards the barrier and lifted myself with the strength in my back and haunches. I rose more than twice as high as Pink Nose had managed with his over-wide flanks and low-slung tummy. My height aided me obviously, but I too felt the discomfort in my back; I was not even approaching trim myself.

I put my paws on the smooth metal of the poles, one paw on each where they were close. I sniffed, inspecting as a dog inspects the world. I detected human scent, the greasy residue left from when they touched the gate and not much else of interest. "This isn't something we can sniff through..." I muttered.

Pink Nose, with a grunt of effort, shifted himself over to the other side of the gate. His heavy paunch wobbled wildly as he did so. Fatty slid into the gap between us, sniffing at the ground. Fatty, and not the three dogs who were considered the brightest of the group, gave us the clue that we needed. After some more moments of intense sniffing, he said, "What holds up the gate?"

"What?" I asked, and looked down at the extremely obese mutt.

Fatty lifted his head from the turf and shook his a little side to side, sending chaotic waves rolling through his thick, shaggy furred neck. "There's nothing under the metal of the gate. How does it hold up?"

Pink Nose, obviously tiring, dropped heavily to his feet, and landing sent a powerful way that coursed throughout the smooth surface of his body and back. He stepped back and looked at the gate as a whole. For myself, I came down with a jolt I could feel in my forelegs and sniffed along the bottom of the gate to confirm Fatty's bizarre claim.

Fat Gut, sitting back and letting us do all the work, said the first helpful thing of the evening. "The gate is connected to the fence. That is how it stands."

I lifted my head and looked at him. He met my eyes levelly and without aggression or superiority. This was a puzzle which fascinated him also, it seemed and later, I found that he'd thought that mastery of the gate was important, even if the choice was to keep it closed as he obviously preferred. From his vantage point at the back, he'd apparently been able to take in the big picture, and yet he was clever enough to pick up on the subtle details which meshed into the whole for me and most other dogs.

Feeling conflicted feelings concerning Fat Gut in my breast, I paced over to him and down down beside where he too was propped up on his forelegs, though I knew that he preferred to lie. "Show me what you mean." I said.

And he proceeded to gesture with his nose. "There looks to be three points where the gate is attached..." There were, naturally the hinges and the latch, though with our utter lack of mechanical sense, these looked merely like three different points of contact, two similar, one not.

"That one is different." Pink Nose was quick to point out.

"It's larger..." said Fatty looking up at the latch.

"And it's more complicated looking." I said suspiciously.

"Shiny!"

Our heads turned in surprise, all ears perking and swiveling and Spinner dove ahead of us, Dizzy biting at his heels. Like as much, the pair had apparently grown bored and began to tussle. I don't know what coincidence led Spinner to latch onto at that moment, the metal bit lying in the grass which I'd forgotten about, but he did and he came up with it in his mouth, Dizzy launching himself after it in two blinks. I was on my feet and after the much smaller collie-mix before he'd made it more than a few steps. But Spinner, naturally was much faster as I began to chase him. He frolicked gaily, the fat rippling on his youth filled body heedlessly, while I attempted for force myself above a jog for the first time in what felt like forever.

The breath caught in my throat as I forced myself to run, my legs feeling heavy, at least in comparison to the weightless energy I'd experienced when I'd been lighter. Spinner wasn't at that point yet, so I found myself fully across the yard with the gap between only greater than it had been at the start and I was already beginning to wind myself. Spinner thought we were playing, naturally, and in other circumstances, we could have been. But with the seriousness of the situation of the gate looming over me, I was hungry for any clues the metal bit in his mouth might contain. Spinner zigzagged and lost a lot of the ground he'd gained, and lost more when I cut him off while he was circling the pavilion. Dizzy finally lent me the edge I needed. He came out of left field, cutting Spinner off and pushing him into a corner of the yard. Spinner tried to make a sudden U-turn, but there wasn't enough space left to get around me. I got a large and heavy paw on his back and flattened him as gently as I could to the sparse turf under him. "Umph!" Spinner grunted, but his tail wagged happily as I panted, feeling my heart pounding in my chest. Unlike my brother, I didn't naturally enjoy this type of exertion; I had more in common with Fat Gut in that regard.

Spinner relented and dropped the saliva soaked prize from his mouth while rolling on his back for me. I stepped over him and rubbed his stomach with the pads of one paw; he squirmed in delight as I reached down to pick up the metal thing.

I took my time getting back to the gate, pausing for a long lap at the fountain. It felt good to let my tongue loll out of my mouth in the cool night air while the metal thing sat like a heavy lump on the back of it. The older members of the Talkie were awaiting me and I set the thing down on the grass before them. I remember looking at Fat Gut, expecting another miraculous realization, but he merely stared at it emptily as one might stare at a fragment of moon rock without comprehension.

And indeed, the thing was as alien to us as if it had fallen out of the sky. The thing was a simple lock, but we had no words for it. "Shiny" perhaps came closest after all.

Pink Nose recalled what he'd said before this night of wonders had began. "That part fell off the gate when Lopside was messing with it."

"If the gate can be opened with this is missing, maybe-" I began but was interrupted by a low guttural sound.

The staggered, churning groan came from Fat Gut's midsection and went on for a long while. He sat and looked at us without embarrassment in the slightest.

I smugly thought of a joke. I was about to ask the shepherd-lab what his gut thought of the matter, but before I could, further grumbling issued from another's tummy. My own this time. My snout wrinkled slightly as I felt a pang sear its way unpleasantly down my midsection. Dinner was a lonely lost memory, despite the literal poundage I'd ingested with four and a half large bowls of dog food. I could see the laughter in the others' eyes at my and Fat Gut's stomachs agreeing while our mouths and minds clashed.

"It'll be dawn soon." Fat Gut announced. "We better get the gate back to the way it was before the humans arrive."

Shit... I hadn't thought of that...

"He's right!" Pink Nose agreed with alacrity. And I realized that anymore talk of exploration in the outside world was going to be foolish... at least until tomorrow tonight. "But how do we get this thing back into the gate?"

I closed my eyes and worked on visualizing the problem in my head. Suddenly the need to solve this quandary did have some urgency after all. I began to dislike the situation immediately now that there was pressure. What would happen if the humans came back and saw their metal bit lying on the ground? Would they even notice? But of course they would, especially if this small bit was somehow crucial in operating the portal. I tried thinking about the fence as an object in my mind, but the image was fuzzy and indistinct. I tried to focus, to paint it more clearly, but it wavered stubbornly the more I tried until I lost the image entirely.

I was about to give up, to admit defeat in front of the other dogs and beg Pink Nose and Fat Gut for a solution, despite the negative effects that would have on my position as Alpha. But a small miracle saved me. The tiniest *plink* sound reached me ears. I knew the sound, it was that of a raindrop striking metal. I heard another and then another as some scattered rain fell on us from the darkened sky. Three notes, four, then three again, landing on the smooth poles of the fence. But it was enough to change my thinking entirely. What if the gate was like a melody? What did that make the metal bit on the ground? Why a missing note of course! Something clicked in my mind and suddenly, I had a firmer grasp on the logic of the situation.

The new understanding prompted my question. "Pink Nose, which side of the gate did the piece fall from, do you remember?"

Pink Nose turned his head around, bunching fat and skin against his cheek. "That side." he said. "I remember it falling after I heard Lopside fiddling with it for a while and looking up. Definitely that side."

It was the side with the latch. Without speaking, I walked over and reared up, inspecting it. Why the wide curving blades of the latch concealed a slightly more complex assembly which was not so obvious. The most prominent of these was the hole, or rather holes, cut from the metal and lining up so that they matched perfectly and I could see through them as I nosed around. By sheer accident, my nose bumped against one wing, lifting it. I started and moved my head, lifting it all the way up. When I did, the gate swung lazily open in the light breeze.

"Topsy, what did you do!" Pink Nose exclaimed, wagging his tail madly.

I don't know! I felt like exclaiming, but remembering my position in the pack, I kept myself composed. I took a breath. And I did know what I had done. "I lifted that wing there, see? The odd curvy shape?"

The dogs saw. "So we know how it opens." said Fat Gut nonchalantly. "Now how do we close it?"

"Like this." Said Terrier-face and proceeded to grip some chain links in his large canines and pulled the fence back. He went slowly at first, but built momentum. When the gate reached the fence, it collided with a loud clang and the wing shape lifted clear and fell in place automatically. We could all see that clearly now that we were paying attention.

"How clever..." said Pink Nose with much awe. and I felt the same awe at human ingenuity as well. The lock was far more complex, of course, and indeed, the music box and other creations I'd seen were far more complex than that, but the latch was something that could be visually understood by looking at it, and so it held much more power over me.

"And how do we keep it closed?" prompted Fat Gut again. There was an edge to his voice and his movements. Almost as if the fattest and laziest dog here were restless to get things back into proper order. Disturbingly, I felt it too, like a cloud hanging over my head, maybe it was guilt, or maybe it was fear of discovery, or both, but right now, I knew that we had to get this thing right before we could talk more about it.

The words fell from my mouth. "The note is missing."

"What's that?" Fat Gut snapped, looking up at me, his fatty neck hanging like a second paunch under his chin.

I coughed. "There's a hole." I corrected myself. "Maybe it fits in there?"

I showed them the hole, but Fat Gut was not impressed. "That's a very small hole. The piece is too large to fit in there." He said, surely thinking that he was clever. The very paunchy shepherd-lab sat again on his massive backside, slouching over the size of his midsection which filled the space under him.

"I don't know... Maybe there's a trick to fitting it in." said Pink Nose who went back to the metal piece lying on the ground. We were saved by luck again, as he happened to pick it up by the arms of the lock, allowing the heavier body to swing down.

"Hold it!" I barked, turning to face the stunned labrador. My tail wagged ferociously behind me, causing Terrier-face to retreat from its whips, but I didn't care. "Tilt your head this way, yeah!" I saw it, as he angled the metal bar which fit into the lock body up at me. I saw how the note could fit. "Give me that!" I barked again, and he did. It was the work of moments to rear up to the latch - which honestly was not at all high for me - and deliver the bar into the hole. "There." I breathed, feeling safe again.

"You did it!" barked Fatty and he slammed his heavy side into me in celebration. I took his weight heartily.

"It doesn't look quite right, though." said Pink Nose, and looking again, I did see that the lock was hanging crookedly, and not how I remembered the fence looking in the past. As I thought about perhaps correcting how the lock lay with my nose, however, Pink Nose Exclaimed, "Look! Look at that! On the bottom of the piece, there's Lopside's symbol."

Pink Nose had a sharp eye, but yes, there it was clear at day, but very tiny. It was easier to see now that the bottom of the device was facing us again, but indeed, there were symboled on little metal rollers at the bottom of the mystery piece. The number "2" was among the three dominant ones, although more were visible at an angle on the rest of the rollers. Pink Nose shook his head and his ears hung low. "What does it mean?" he moaned and whined.

Similar feelings of dread and confusion spread through the pack, though Fat Gut remained most indifferent. I myself was not immune and I felt that the emergence of this mystery figure which was suddenly appearing in the most unexpected of places was some ominous sign, dreadful in its incomprehension. How could I protect the pack from that which I did not and possibly could not understand? How could I protect myself?

Fat Gut kept us from slipping into a panic. While the rest of us were whining, he stood and walked among us, his wide fatty flanks brushing and pushing against most of us while we were whining and staring up at the character as if it were a comet in the sky portending doom. "It means nothing. It's just a coincidence." he yapped, and hit Pink Nose full in the face with his tail, for he was the worst affected of us. "Just fix the damn thing and lets go get some sleep. No one moved, not even me. I remember, I was trying to fit the character into a musical context, hoping the metaphor would help in understanding how the same character could emerge from three apparently unrelated sources. I remember it wasn't working.

I do remember hearing Fat Gut sigh raggedly and look up at the lock over head. He ground his teeth and then spread his feet, pawing at the ground a little before steeling himself. With great effort, he heaved his upper body up from a sitting position, pushing himself straight up with the strength in his haunches because his back alone was not up to the task of rearing all the massive weight of his, as great now as it had ever been. His belly pressed quickly against the links, halting his rise. Then he squirmed, pawing his way up with his forepaws because he needed to stand up nearly straight to reach the lock with his nose. His soft belly pushed deep into the diamond shaped gaps in the links and pushed down his paunch so that I could see the lower swell of it between his hind legs. It was a mammoth effort and he groaned in pain, undoubtedly because his hind feet were hurting him, despite sharing his weight with the fence. Grunting like a hog, he shimmied his way up, links pulling at the tightened skin of his torso and surely abrading the red livid stretch marks he sported. With a final gasp of effort, he nosed the lock around with his snout so that it at least appeared at it normally did, then collapsed to the ground where he sat and breathed heavily for a while.

After a minute of such, the whole time we spent looking at him and the grand effort he'd put forth considering how handicapped he was by the grand figure he'd earned, he got up again and waddled slowly off to have a lap and the fountain, shortly after falling into a deep slumber, broken only by periodic growls from his stretched and well worked stomach.

The rest of the Talkie had little to say and I myself did not want to bring up the topic of the mystery character which loomed so large in our hearts just now. But more than that, I didn't speak for the shame I felt at all but forcing Fat Gut to act when I could have so much more easily done as I'd known had to be done. It was a thinner dog's place to do things for larger dogs what they found difficult, by virtue of their prominence in the society and the fact that they obviously pleased the humans more than the thin canines. It was a matter of simple, understood duty, such as a dog quietly understands, though our pack was different in its valued qualities than most. And I'd failed in that duty. It didn't matter if Terrier-face, Pink Nose - even Fatty, who was still far less obese than Fat Gut - could have stepped up to the same task also. I could have done it and I hadn't and the "not-dog" part of myself lingered on my failure...