A Fox in the Works The Neverending By Fox Cutter 05/10/2000: I sat in Starker's office, my hands crossed in my lap as I looked at the large bear. He looked back at me with narrow eyes as he sat on the edge of his desk. We had been looking at each other like this since my session had begun about ten minutes before. "You have to say something this time," the doctor finally said, a small smile playing over his muzzle. "I'm not sure how much I can say, I told you everything in our last session, I was hoping for some advice about what to do about it," I replied. He chuckled and nodded his head. "Solutions will not come easily, or as a nice platitude summed up in a few words. Answers take time, as does recovery. You've never given yourself a chance to recover." I shrugged my shoulders and laced my fingers together. "It's been over four months; I think I've had time to recover," I countered. "No, you spent two months feeling sorry for yourself, and the rest of the time ignoring it. You've never tried to recover, you just filed it away," he said. "The time has come when you have to do more than that, you have to face your problems and try to recover." "I wouldn't call it feeling sorry for myself," I muttered in reply. He nodded his head. "Why don't you change into your female form," he suggested. My first thought was to refuse, but I bit that back. I let out a long sigh and took off my glasses, with a push of my powers I allowed myself to slide back into my female self. Starker smiled. "An improvement, normally you would be anything else but a woman," he told me. I took a long breath and nodded my head, adjusting myself to accommodate my tail. "Well I've come to one or two realizations, enough to know that refusing to take this form does not help me," I replied. "A minor breakthrough," he said with a smile and picked up his notepad. "I've been reading the stories you've written about your exploits. I've been finding them very interesting." I chucked softly and flicked my ears slightly forward. "I suspect you will find that I've exaggerated a few things. I'm not really as great as I tried to make myself out," I told him. He shook his head. "I don't believe that you are over- extending your portrayal of yourself. If anything you present yourself as a weak person. It seems like you felt yourself to be an object, something to be used and abused. It's only in the later stories that you seem to become emotionally whole." I shrugged my shoulders. "They are fictionalized stories of events; you shouldn't read so much into them," I said. Starker shook his head again. "I think you put more in there than you had anticipated or planned. You wanted to make it more believable, and your inner self guided your hand. I would be interested to know what changed your view of yourself?" "Oriana. I know it's a cliché, but she does complete me. I'm more of a person with her than I was without her," I said. He nodded his head and made a few notes. "Fatherhood has probably helped you as well. Yet when you came to me you were slipping back into the state you were in before. You saw yourself as an object that was used and damaged, not as a person." "Well, I was raped," I said with a frown, my ears tipping down into my hair. "In more ways than one. It broke through into something you had hidden away and brought it all back," he said. I shrugged my shoulders again and crossed my arms over my chest. The doctor smiled at this. "If I may be so bold, this is not the first time such a violation has happened to you," he said. I felt myself grow cold, angered that he could read me so well. That was something I had told Oria, but I had made sure to keep it out of my stories. I just glared at him, pressing my lips into a thin line. He nodded his head and made a few more notes. "When you were younger you had very few people on which you could rely. You've already told me some about your family, and what happened to you in school. For you the multi-verse was an escape, an exit from the grayness of you life. Then it was damaged by the first assault, and then forbidden to you by your exile. You had no one to talk to about it at all," he said. My ears perked up at that. "There was Becky," I said. I had never told him anything about Rebecca's return, and I never would. "And you lost her soon afterwards, leaving you no one to talk to. Even then you never did tell her about your past violation, correct?" I nodded my head. "So you put it away and tried to ignore it, unknowing of the damage that it had caused you. Your wife helped heal you, but even so you kept what happened in the past. Now it's happened again and everything came back, creating conflict in your mind," he told me. "I wouldn't go as far as to say that," I told him, allowing my arms to relax down to rest in my lap. The doctor nodded his head and made a few more notes. "So, tell me about the first time this happened?" I shook my head. "I'm not really willing to do that. That was personal on every level. I can talk about the brutality of what happened last time, but not about the first time. That's just more than I'm willing to do," I said. "Fair enough," Starker replied, making yet more notes on his pad. The scratching of his pen was becoming rather annoying. He let out a long breath and stood up from his reclined position. "Fox, there are a few things you need to believe, things that you don't want to believe, but you must believe them none the less. The very first one is something I've been telling you since you came to me, and you have not accepted it. What happened to you was not your fault." I let out a snort and waved a paw at him. "You're wrong about that. If it wasn't for me none of it would have ever happened." The bear shook his head. "I'll say it again, it's not your fault." "But it was," I replied. He chuckled softly. "You see? This is the problem. You are blaming yourself for what happened when you were not the one who caused it," he told me. I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him. "It was my mission, it was my screw-up. If I had gone after Samantha when things started to go wrong it would never have happened," I said. "It was not your fault," Starker repeated. "But--" I started to say, but he cut me off with a short grunt. "You really like blaming yourself, Fox, but you were not the one who raped you. You were the victim, you were the one taken, assaulted, violated. Unless you were the rapist it was not your fault," he said in a cold and measured voice. I said nothing in reply. I just turned my head away from him. A few moments later I heard him move closer to me, than I felt his paws on my cheek. Gently he turned my head to the side so I look him in the eye. "Fox, the man who did this to you was a monster, a beast that attacked you and hurt you. He did it to you, but you did not invite him to do so. He did it, not you. He's the one who is responsible, not you. Blame him, not yourself." Closing my eyes I still said nothing. I wanted to believe him, but I knew better. It was my actions alone that brought about my rape, nothing more. Starker let out a sigh and pulled away from me. "I've worked with many people who have been through the same things that you have. It's the men who always refuse to accept that it was not their fault. It's about control; men are normally in control and can't accept that such a loss of control could happen outside of their own actions." "You could just be wrong," I said, opening my eyes again. He shook his head. "Not in this case," he said. We exchanged a short look, and I finally let out a soft laugh. "I guess it's better than 'I know you better than you know yourself'. That's what my first shrink said," I told him. The bear smiled and nodded his head. "I can't imagine how that would help anyone," he said. I nodded. "Certainly didn't help me." Starker smiled a bit and sat down on the edge of his desk. "There's one more thing I want you to remember," he said. Perking my ears up I leaned forward to hear what else he had for me. "What happened does not make you any less of a person. You are still the same person you were before the assault," he said. I mulled that over for a few moments, relaxing my arms down to rest on my lap. "That is something I can believe," I said after a short time. The bear smiled. "Then we have made progress," he said. * * * I leaned over the bathroom sink, staring myself directly into the eyes. The ice blue irises looked back at me, the black even darker for it. I tried to see something else in them, the part of my soul that Starker seemed to see, that Oriana could see, but it wasn't there. With a sigh I relaxed myself and shifted back into my human form. Soul searching was fairly tedious work, and that was even more true if you didn't believe you had a soul. I was firmly in that camp. I took a moment to wash my face and put on my glasses before I returned to the bedroom. Rhea was lying over the top of the bed, sprawled out on her back with all four paws in the air. She was snoring softly, her large chest rising and falling with each breath. Chuckling to myself, I sat down on the edge of the bed. Leaning over, I rested my head down on her chest, listening to her large body as the air moved in and out. The rough fur felt nice on my bare cheek and scratched gently where my beard once was. A few moments later Rhea lifted up her head, then reached around with one paw and rested it on my back. <> she said. I laughed and snuggled up a bit closer to her, rubbing my chin against her neck. "It's a nice feeling, but it's better when we match forms," I told her. She licked gently at my hair and said: <> A low purring started inside my chest as I thought about that for a few moments. "You know, it's tempting. I think I could use that today," I said. Rhea reached around with her other foreleg and wrapped it around me. I was about to change forms when the bedroom door opened up and Oria walked inside. I smiled up to my wife. She was in a long light purple skirt that brushed over her feet and a matching blouse that was cut just right to show off her figure. She stopped for a moment, a small smile playing over her face as she looked us over. "Are you two having fun?" she asked, her arms crossing over her chest. "It's fairy nice; I was about to go full form myself," I told her with a smile, then something occurred to me. "You know, hon, you've never used the norm-shift stone. I bet you would look great on all fours. Why don't you grab the stone and join us?" A surprised look crossed over her face, but was replaced by a silly little smile. "I don't know about that, hon. Right now you have a delivery," she said and held out a PADD. I frowned a bit, thinking about what it could be, then my frown deepened when I realized that there were only two possible answers. "Sorry Rhea, this is probably important," I said. The lioness nodded her head, <> she said. Sighing I slipped off of Rhea and stood back up. Oria came up to me and handed me the PADD. I took it from her, but instead of reading it I leaned forward and kissed her fully on the lips. "I love you," I said a moment later. "I love you, too," she replied, her paws wrapping around my waist and rubbed gently at the base of my spine. I purred again, this time a lot deeper than before. We pressed together and we kissed once more, this time the warmth between us was growing. Pulling away was more of a chore this time, but I had to do it -- we did need to breath. "I'll take care of this as fast as I can," I told her, my hand reaching down to stroke the gentle curve of her perfect ass. She laughed. "You keep that up and I may have to charge you for it," she said with a wink. I returned the wink and finally looked at the PADD. It wasn't from Jadith as I hoped, which meant it was something much different. It was an analysis of some soil I had brought back from Solitude. After having provoked the outburst from Rebecca the week before I remember something that Romana had told me in one of her trips to the past. She said that Solitude was the oldest place that there was. The information in my hand confirmed that. Solitude was at least thirty billion years older than anything else in the multi-verse. It was the very first universe, by quite a wide margin. Oria reached out with her paws and grasped me by the shoulder. "What is it, Fox?" she asked. I took a deep breath and smiled at her. "I know where The Neverending lives," I said, starting to smile. "So what do we do?" she asked. <> Rhea said as she walked up to my side. "All three of us are going to," I said. "It's time we started to have a serious discussion with the source of the problem, not just the messenger girl." Oria smiled and walked over to the dresser and opened up the case with her needler. I followed her lead and pulled out my guns, tucking them away. "We need someone to watch the children," my wife said. I nodded. With Kalie no longer living with us we didn't really have a live-in babysitter. On the other hand we had two people who were about to have nothing to do standing just outside the door. Walking out of the bedroom I turned to look at our bodyguards. The two tigers were standing side by side, and arm in arm. "I need to ask you two for a favor," I said. They separated from each other, and Ravindar gave me a dark look. "What kind of favor is it?" he asked, a little leery. "Oriana and I need you to watch the children for a few hours," I said. His frown grew deeper. "We have a trip to take and it's one where you two must stay here." He closed his eyes for a few moments, talking in a long breath before slowly letting it out. "What is there for me to say that I haven't already said?" he asked. I shrugged my shoulders. "Nothing, I know it just as well as you do. This is important, though, and we need to take care of it. If you give me a moment I'll write down the verse number and you can come after us if we aren't back in a couple of hours." The white tiger's jaw clenched slightly but he said nothing else. Santhera took up the ball. "We'll watch the children, but you have exactly three hours from this second." "Thank you. I owe you both for this," I said and went back into the room. I took out my fold controller and pulled up the verse number. It was a long one as it wasn't in the database so I had to double check that I had all forty digits correct. Together, Rhea, Oria and I walked out of the room. I gave Ravindar the note on the way to the fold room. Once there I pulled out the familiar feeling for Solitude and opened the fold. The three of us walked through and onto the grass- covered plain. I shut the fold behind us, and I made sure to keep it cold. I didn't want anyone following us before our time was up. "So how do we contact The Neverending?" my wife asked. I shrugged. "We need to get its attention," I said as I turned around and started to the tree I had been using as a marker. The three long cuts in the tree that counted the years I had been away from Earth were easily visible from a hundred feet away. Taking a moment at the base of the tree, I stood over where Naomi was buried. The three of us stood in silence over the gravestone. She was my adopted daughter and Beca's mother, and had died far too soon. A few moments later we turned away and looked back out over the grass. "Let's head this way," I said and started towards the horizon. The light gravity was easy enough to walk in, and Rhea seemed to be enjoying herself, leaping as high as I was tall with almost no effort. I had my arm wrapped around Oria's waist and was holding her close to me as we crossed the plain. In about thirty minutes we were far enough away that the tree had vanished over a small hill. When I was satisfied we were far enough away I brought us to a stop. "Okay, this will be it," I said. "What are we going to do?" she asked. I walked a few feet away from her and looked up into the blue sky. "By being polite and asking to talk to someone. We know The Neverending is from this universe, so it's time we got a chance to talk to it. So I'm going to start by asking nicely," I said. <> Rhea said after a minute had past. "Maybe," I said, waiting for a few more moments. "Let me try this again. You will show up and talk to me in the next ten minutes or I will pass on the address of this little universe to the Hunters. You will have every scientist in the fucking multi-verse on your doorstep, capiche?" "I understood everything but 'capiche'," a new voice said from behind us. The familiar sound of bells made the source of the voice easier to identify. We turned around, to find the unicorn standing in the grass. Oriana gasped softly. This was the first time she had ever met the horse-like creature. Not that the unicorn was a horse, it just looked like one mostly, but more was different than just the horn. "I wanted The Neverending itself, but I guess you will have to do. I take it you're Rebecca's keeper?" I asked. The unicorn turned her head to the side. "You could say that, I suppose. It wouldn't be the best description, but it will do for the moment." I gave her a smile and we all walked towards her. Rhea moved closer to her head and Oria and I flanked her on each side. She was trapped, at least as well as we could. She was making no attempt to get away. Flexing my fingers I took a step forward and looked her in her blue eyes. "So, why is The Neverending interested in me? Remember, if I don't like the answer I'm going to call down the brains to dig around here and the ringworld." "Because you are human," she answered, like it was self- evident. Oria shook her head. "We need a better answer than that," she said, reaching out to touch the animal's flank. I made a quite motion for her stop. I remembered what happened when I touched the unicorn's horn, and it wasn't pleasant. The unicorn tilted her head and looked between us. "The Neverending has a soft spot for humans. It prefers to work with them if it can; that's why it picked both you and Rebecca." "Why humans?" I asked. "They created it. The world that this moon used to orbit was inhabited by them. Near the end they created a thought in which to place their minds; that is The Neverending," she explained. I nodded, understand now. "That's what the ringworld is, isn't it? A massive computer that is The Neverending. The fact that life lives on it is just a nice touch." The unicorn laughed, filling the air with the sound of tinkling bells. "The life is a part of the matrix, but more than that is beyond my understanding," she said. "That's more than I needed to know," I said. "We still have more questions." She tilted her head to the side and nodded her head, the white mane bouncing over her shoulders. "I'm willing to answer them." "Why does The Neverending want this one world saved? These robots must have destroyed hundreds of worlds, why save only this one?" Oriana asked. The unicorn flicked her tail. It was like a lion's tail instead of a horse's tail. "Because the destruction of this world will start a chain reaction, and that is what we need to stop." I waited a few moments for her to say more, but she didn't seem to be forthcoming. "No half answers. Keep going," I said. "There are things in the Multi-verse that even you do not know, Fox. There is something called a Pocket. It's a smaller Multi-verse inside the larger one. Outside of the Pocket it looks like a normal, single universe, but once you get inside, it is its own Multi-verse, some times working on totally different rules. Normally each universe in a Pocket is a close match to each other, almost duplicates," she explained. "In the normal course of events a Pocket will exist just like any other universe, but sometimes that is not true. About fifteen years ago there was a crisis in a Pocket universe. It was a place The Neverending kept an eye on because each universe had it's own Earth, and it's fascinated by such things." I nodded my head. "So what happened in this Pocket?" The unicorn smiled a bit. It was an odd look for a horse, or at least a horse-like creature. "We do not know. By the time The Neverending looked back into it everything had changed. A near infinite number of Earths had been destroyed, and the remaining few had collapsed down into a single universe. Everything had merged together." My wife chimed in, showing why I loved her for me than just her body. "That's the chain reaction. You think that if this world is destroyed it will destroy another Pocket?" The unicorn nodded her head. "Yes, that is what we believe will happen. The fear is that if this happens too often, a similar collapse will start in the multi-verse itself. The Neverending is exploring ways to restore the original Pocket, but for now we want to stop any further collapses." "How could the loss of this planet destroy this Pocket multi-verse?" I asked. "I do not know. The Neverending has not told me exactly what it foresees. Even so, I trust it when it says that the risk is there," she replied. Oria carefully folded her hands behind her back, flexing her fingers slightly in annoyance, her tail flicking in matching agitation. "So you don't really know what will happen one way or the other. You're putting Fox's life in danger for this?" The unicorn lowered her head and pointed her sharp looking horn at my wife. It wasn't done as a threat, more as a motion of agreement. "It is necessary that it be done, and Fox is the only one the Neverending believes can do it." Rhea snorted a bit. <> she snapped. "That is true, but only because our first choice isolated himself away from the multi-verse. It's only recently he has returned to it, but in a non-human form," the unicorn explained, her large eyes turning to the lioness. I nodded my head, taking a few steps back as I thought about everything. "You know, if you had told me all of this ahead of time, I probably would have volunteered, and probably with enough lead time that I could arrange to get a few ships to this world." The unicorn snorted and pawed her front hoof at the ground. "The Neverending does not work that way," she said. Oria smirked. "Of course not -- it uses people, it doesn't work with them," she said. "That's all it knows how to do," the unicorn replied, her head dropping a bit more. "Those of us whom it has saved have paid a very high price for the service. It's for the best that you do not have to pay that price." "Without a doubt," I said with a sigh, rubbing my temples with my fingers. "I want some technical information about all of this, about Pockets and the one that collapsed. I'm not going into this unprepared. I also want complete honesty from now on, none of these half answers and evasions. You, the Neverending and whatever other agents it might have will tell me everything I want to know when I ask. I can still screw you all over, so don't screw around with me anymore, got it?" The unicorn lifted her head, turning it so that one of her eyes looked at me. "I can not promise that. I'm not the Neverending, I'm just a pawn in its games," she said. "I'm not going to be a pawn anymore. If The Neverending wants me to work for it in the future it damn well better ask me," I snapped. She glared at me and her horn lowered slightly, this time it was a threatening gesture. "If you care to remember, we did, and you refused it." I nodded my head. "And you went out of the way to make sure I changed my mind. It was a nice song and dance, sending Rebecca to 'save my life' when if I had waited a day I would have been saved. You guys did nothing but weave a tale to get my agreement." <> my sometimes twin sister said. <> I could feel my skin pull tight as a frown crossed my face. I glared down at the lioness, wishing I could speak directly with her. I wanted to chew her out for not telling me that little fact before. The unicorn was looking at me with narrowed eyes, her horn held at chest level. "I apologize for the accusation," I said through clenched teeth. With a soft whinny the unicorn nodded her head and took a few steps to the side. "You are an honorable man. You were willing to help us even when you thought we deceived you. This is part of why you are the best choice for this mission. We need a person like you," she said. I nodded my head and walked over to Oriana. I slipped my arm around my wife's waist and held her tightly to me. "I rather you didn't," I said. The unicorn nodded and looked at the three of us in turn. "If you have no further questions of me?" she asked. I shook my head, silencing Oria with a soft squeeze. "Then I shall take my leave of you," the unicorn replied, glancing down at Rhea for a moment before turning away from us and running over the grassy plain. "I had my own questions," Oriana said as she pulled out of my grasp. I nodded my head. "I'm sure you did, hon," I said as we started walking back to the fold. She followed by my side, her ears laying low in her hair. "Then why didn't you let me ask them?" she said. I thought about that for a few seconds, my mind wondering over why I had silenced her. "Because I was thrown off balance by finding out that she really had helped me. I was happy to believe that she had deceived me, instead of aiding me." Oria nodded her head, moving closer to me as we walked. "It's easier to hate them if you think they tricked you." I nodded my head. "Now I really do owe them something," I said. We continued are walked in silence, neither one of us noticing that Rhea was no longer following with us. * * * Rhea walked over the short grass, feeling it compress under the pads of her paws as she moved with elegant ease. It was a relaxed walk, neither stalking nor hunting, but it still had a purpose. She glanced over her shoulder as she descended a small rise, somewhat pleased to see that the grass had sprung back, leaving no sign of her passage. Her scent was still clinging to the grass, so she would be able to find her way back to the fold. The last thing she wanted was to become lost on a planet of near infinite plains and trees. It took her a few moments to register the fact that she was no longer alone. The large form of the unicorn was now keeping pace beside her. "You wished to speak to me?" the somewhat horse asked, the cloven hooves leaving temporary indentations on the grass as she walked. <> the lioness replied. The unicorn lowered her head, her mane falling over her eyes. "What would that be?" she asked. Rhea laughed a little bit. <> she said. "I am at a loss as to why that is relevant," she said. The lioness came to a stop and looked the unicorn in the eye. <> she said. "I see," the unicorn replied, the bell-like quality falling from her voice. "My scent would cling to those whom I'm in close quarters with," she said. Rhea laughed. <> There was a slight pause as the unicorn closed her eyes. Her horn lowered further down until it was touching the ground. "Thank you for calling me Becky, I hate Rebecca," she said. <> "All and neither. My human form is gone now, destroyed by the changes the Neverending brought to me. This is the form of my soul, the Pantheress is what I become to interact with others," she said. The lioness nodded her head, looking up at the transformed young woman. She didn't know how she should feel about this. She felt the same way about her that Fox did, the same love and loss that filled him. What she did not have was the anger that came with the deception about her death. She was able to see her for the person she once was, the person that Fox could not see. <> Rhea said. The unicorn nodded and settled down into the grass, folding her legs under her body. "I didn't want Fox to know; he would have blamed himself and treated me like a china doll. I couldn't have that," she said. Rhea moved up to the unicorn's body and lay down next to her. <> "I didn't understand the implications at the time," she replied. <> Becky nodded her head, keeping her hair over her face so she didn't have to look the lioness in the eyes. "Every time I thought about it. Less now than before. I've learned to live with what I've become," she said. Rhea nodded her head. <> "I can't do that; I can't get away from it," she whispered. <> Rhea said. She then turned away and started back to the fold. "Will you tell Fox?" the unicorn asked. <> the lioness replied. Then with a flick of her tail, she started to rush across the plain, hoping to catch up with the others before they reached the fold. The unicorn that had once been the human named Becky remained on the plain long after the others had gone, lost in her own thoughts and wishes. Alone. ----- This story (AFiW #509) is copyright 2006 by Fox Cutter. Hardcopy reprints limited to one per person, all other rights reserved. This story may not be distributed for a fee except by permission of the author, and this copyright notice may not be removed.