FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Adipose City: The Eyes of the Oasis

By Psion

An Adipose City Story

All Rights Reserved

The world had become a strange place after the collapse of the petroleum markets, strange and arguably wonderful in some regards. The decline of the old world orders lead to the emergence of new corporate powers monopolizing and enhancing the production of the most precious resource of the post-Peak Oil age, food. Genetically modified crops and livestock, green houses built like skyscrapers, and many other wonders fueled by a sudden need to provide food security. With this new world and technology came many changes, not the least significant was the increase in the average body weight. In the battle between fat and thin that consumed the Petroleum Age, fat had finally won out by an ironically wide margin.

In the power shift that ensured, six major food franchises and dozens of smaller ones established themselves to form the new order. Yet none were quite as curious as the minor Arabic corporation Al Ain, the Oasis. In the chaotic collapse of the petroleum industry, communications Africa and the Middle East went dark, leaving precious little information on how the company came into being. While much was unclear about their origins, their intentions appeared to be as translucent as they were benign; Al Ain was far more interested in fattening both its wallet and its waistline then it was in making war. Though as some learned the hard way, just because the wandering corporation projected the seemingly forgotten image of the Arabic merchant as it traveled across the globe didn't mean its employees were without teeth...

In the American Southwest, border territory between the Burger World and Taco King corporations, a bulky, sandy-colored food truck drove along the highway. The asphalt highway wove through the vibrant desert like a serpent as the mobile kitchen's driver skillfully navigated the ungainly vehicle along the road. Or at least the driver gave the appearance they were skillful behind the wheel.

"Saffron, we're lost. Pull over so we can check the map before we burn any more methane." Came the umpteenth plea from the passenger seat in the front of the truck.

Saffron, fennec vixen and Al Ain Big Tool, did her best to avoid sighing as she finally caved to Shamar's constant pleading. They weren't lost, not even remotely, Al Ain didn't make much in the way of electronics but they knew how to make an excellent GPS receiver. But the Steel Chef had become something of a traditionalist when it came navigation, routes must be checked against a paper map. Never mind the fact that the only paper maps that existed any more were computer printouts.

The engine idled for barely a minute as Saffron watched her sister trace the route with her finger. "Satisfied?" The overstuffed female technician asked the other rotund fennec animan.

"Yes, looks like we're going the right way this time." Shamar nodded approvingly as they took off again, their mobile kitchen slowly moving back up to highway speed.

"I told you, the GPS says we have roughly two hundred kilometers left on this road and we'll meet up with the rest of the caravan in San Antonio. Why can't you just trust the equipment?"

"The last time I trusted the equipment sister, we were two hundred miles away from our destination because you had forgotten to update the navigation software."

"You're never going to let me forget that are you?"

"How can I? You're meticulous when it comes to maintenance sister, how could you forget to update the navigation software?"

"I thought I had it set on auto-update." Saffron grumbled softly.

Neither of them spoke for the next several minutes, Shamar having run out of reason to continue riling her sister and Saffron focused on the road. Both of them were taken aback by the sudden appearance of another sandy-colored van with Al Ain livery painted across the side. Barring differences in license plates, it could have easily been a perfect replica for the one the sisters were driving. The other vehicle soon passed them and pulled in front of them, seemingly oblivious to their presence.

"I didn't think anyone else from our caravan was taking this road." Shamar remarked.

Carefully siding her HardLink goggles over her eyes and bringing up the augmented reality display, Saffron checked the status of the rest of the Al Ain convoy they were supposed to meet up with in San Juan. "They aren't. At least they're not supposed to be within a hundred kilometers of us at any rate. This vehicle isn't using one of our recent transmitter frequencies either."

"Maybe they forgot to update their software?" Shamar teased.

Saffron was currently too engrossed in the mystery suddenly in front of her to recognize her sister's jab. "No... this is old. Easily two to three years old." She mused aloud before reaching for the truck's radio and attempted to hail them, the radio produced nothing but static in reply.

As suddenly as it appeared, the other vehicle turned and went off-road into the desert surrounding the city. Saffron looked, bit back the urge to chase after it, and kept on driving towards the company meeting place in San Juan. An interesting mystery, but they were already a little bit behind schedule between traffic and Shamar's stubborn refusal to trust the computer. Surely there was a reasonable explanation for this strange van that did not require chasing it halfway across the Texan desert...

Joining the rest of the caravan in San Antonio went without further incident. A vacant lot had been rented out and was filled with a fleet of sandy-colored vehicles. The entire line of Al Ain transport was essentially on display. Food trucks and mobile kitchens built into a variety of vans and trailers producing traditional Arabic dishes, cargo vehicles deployed into small shops, and large land-ships held the bulk of the caravan's residential space. Well over a hundred Al Ain employees and their families bustled about with activity, a humming throng of humans and animen cooking, eating, checking cargo, and performing maintenance on their vehicles.

Parking in an opportune space amidst the organized chaos of the camp, the sisters turned off their truck and straightened out their robes before joining the rest of the caravan. Shamar needed to see if she could get a few spices for her pantry while Saffron wished to talk about the mysterious van the fennec sisters recently saw and see if anyone saw anything unusual. Time to make sure they were presentably decent; the sun still had a ways to set...

While they employed the elastic wonder fabric in the same copious amounts as other groups, the Arabs of Al Ain was somewhat unique in how they used Expandex. One of the few groups that had managed to master creating a variant with the consistency of cotton, they used it extensively to create light, relatively loose-fitting robes similar to the traditional men's attire from the Petroleum Age. While not as... stringent as previous generations, company employees still liked to maintain an air of modesty regardless of their size and the fennec sisters were no exception despite their generous girths. Long black hair flowed around enormous fennec ears like an obsidian river; soft, pretty brown eyes framed by slightly rounded faces. The girls would have almost looked like twins were it not for a slight difference in height and where their weights settled. Shamar was slightly shorter then her sister and her body kept a fairly balanced if hyper-endowed hourglass. Saffron was a little less then six inches taller then Shamar and her broad bottom had long since won the war with her top for which ended up bigger, her robe occasionally fought to conceal more then the impression of her large, jutting rump and wide thighs.

Ready, the sisters walked out into the camp and went their separate ways. Saffron found her way to where a group of Al Ain Road Hogs and Big Tools had gathered; the vehicle specialists and field technicians of the company were sitting around an open fire pit. As the drivers exchanged stories over a warm brew, Saffron listened to the others and retold her experience before arriving into San Antonio. From what she could tell, there were two or three of these vehicles roaming the desert outside of the city. All of them openly projecting the appearance of flying the Al Ain banner yet clearly did not belong to the company. Obviously worrisome yet at the same time no one could agree on what it could be, some thought it was a phantom of the cyberpunk age, others thought one of the other corporations had a black ops project that they didn't adequately cover up. Nothing was certain other then that the caravan had witnessed something it probably was not supposed to see.

Saffron was about to head back to her truck dejected when she heard the scream followed by the sound of gunshots in the general direction of where Shamar was going to look for spices. Immediately the camp was in an uproar, agents and guards alike were reaching for weapons and racing towards the disturbance. The fennec techie reached for her sidearm only to remember that she left it with her sister...

Moving after the armed crowd of caravan guards with a speed not typical of her weight, Saffron found her sister and one of the spice merchants unharmed besides being absolutely terrified. Both the vulpine Steel Chef and the human trader looked horribly pale, her sister's Peacemaker handgun in the vixen's hands as a wisp of smoke left the gun barrel. Lying in between the two of them with a trio of bullets in its chest and crimson blood soaking the dry earth was a creature unlike anything Saffron had ever seen before.

The thing, whatever it was, was a muscular bipedal lizard about three feet tall. At first glance it brought back memories of reading about prehistoric dinosaurs that once roamed the earth and looking at some artists' imaginings of the velociraptor, a feathered predator that looked to be as much a bird as it was a reptile. Brown and white feathers gave an almost comical appearance to an otherwise fearsome-looking creature armed with large talons and sharp teeth. Yet most curious was the fleshy red bob on its head, it almost looked like it... no, it couldn't be...

Seeing her sister, Shamar broke down and cried as she threw herself in the other female's arms. Saffron gingerly took the gun out of the cyber-chef's hand and flicked the safety back on before putting it away. Putting on her best smile, the vulpine Big Tool tried to comfort her sister. "Well Shamar, looks like you're cooking chicken tonight."

It took the other onlookers a moment to connect the dots the same way the field technician had. But once they did, a few in the crowd began to chuckle nervously. Genetically modified livestock were not unheard of, they were one of the many things that helped the world become as fat and round as it was. But neither were engineered predators, creatures created by the PhysEd Consortium and other entities discontent with the current status quo to disrupt ranching and farming. Still, engineering a chicken to be a predatory killer? That took a special kind of crazy not often found even in the Post-Peak world....

Saffron had been largely joking when she suggested that Shamar tried cooking the mutant chicken... thing she had managed to kill earlier. But apparently the other stout vixen felt she still had something to prove and the truck was soon filled with the smell of cooking chicken and Shamar's favorite spice mix. Of course this wasn't entirely unusual for anyone in Adipose City though, the preferred method of dealing with engineered predators tended to involve the digestive tract in some way. Predators were not exactly cheap, the price often justified by how much damage they're expected to do over a relatively long natural lifetime. Having the infernal monsters end their lives early in someone's hungry belly tended to ruin that investment, which is probably the initial reason why some curious individual decided to see if the monsters tasted good. Unfortunately for PEC and other groups, this nameless person's curiosity ending up spawning a variety of cookbooks.

So there Saffron was in the truck's sleeping cabin, reclining in her underwear and with her large bottom providing almost as much padding as the cushions she was sitting on, as Shamar carefully carried out one platter full of chicken prepared two ways and handed it off to her sister before heading back to carry out another platter for herself. Nothing was wasted, anything that wasn't on their plates, and there was a lot, had been preserved and put away for the Steel Chef to experiment with later. Saffron was thoughtful as she appraised her offerings, time to see how her sister's latest culinary experiment worked out...

Merciful creator in heaven did her sister know how to cook, a stuffed Saffron contemplated as she got ready for bed after dinner. Her tawny-furred stomach had formed a tight dome, crammed full of deliciously prepared meat. Most likely a tailor was going to be in her future soon, if there were any more of these delicious monsters to be found her robes would become unbearably tight before too long.

With dinner finished, the sisters finished cleaning up and getting ready for bed. Just the end of another successful day in the caravan, except the locks on all the doors were double-checked and Saffron made sure to keep both her guns and her sister close to her person tonight....