[Vfw-times] story: Brave New World

[Oren Otter]

I mentioned earlier that I was working on the sequel to "Brave New World".
I then realized, however, that BNW never made it to the list.  So, now, on
the night when the world was supposed to wink out of existance, it seems
like the perfect time to post the story.
Enjoy everyone!




Brave New World
by Oren the otter

        Oren-the-Otter let his jaw hang slack as he gazed about him.  His
eyes met
green fields, distant cities on the horizon, copses of beautiful green
trees, snow-capped mountains...
But most prominent was the pond.
        It was a rather large pond, shaped like a lilly-pad.  There were two
islands out in the middle, each with a single palm tree.  One housed a
small library and the other an art museum.  There was a house made out of a
small hill on one shore.  On the other, a set of steps accompanied by a
signpost with pictures and messages.  A stream ran into the pond at one
end, and out the other.  Where it emerged, there was a sign pointing
"Downstream to my favorite links".
        "Oh my WORD!" cried Oren.  "It's the Pond!  It's Otter's Pond, my
website!
 It's real!"  He put his hand to his head in amazement, immediately
discovering that his arm was much shorter.  "Oh boy." he said, looking
down.  His guess was right.  He was covered from head to foot in brown fur.
 Oren-the-Otter was now Oren, the Otter.
        Oren should probably be ecstatic, he thought, Eager to explore this
imaginary landscape suddenly made real, or at least to try out his new
body.  All he wanted, though, was to know how he had gotten into his own
web site and how the heck he was going to get out?
        He decided to strike out and see if he could find a physical exit
of some
kind.  Since the stream was the analogue of his links page, it seemed to
make the most sense to follow it.  Slowly, on unfamiliar flippers, the
otter made his way along the bank of the stream.  It was a pleasant walk,
or would have been for one not fretting about the nature of reality.  In
moments, he arrived at the mouth of a huge cave.  A huge yellow flower,
easily five times his height stood next to the entrance.
        Oren immediately recognized the place from it's internet icon.
This was
Gornul's website.
        "Gornul?" called Oren.  "Kelly?  Are you in there?"
        A large blue dragon stuck his head out of the cave.  Upon seeing the
otter, he grabbed the smaller animal in a joyous embrace.
        "Oren, am I glad to see you!" said the dragon."
        "What's going on?" asked Oren.  "Why are we animals, and why are our
websites real?"
        "I was hoping you would know." replied Gornul.  "You don't know?"
        "I haven't the foggiest."
        Both of the transformed gazed downstream.  They might as well continue
downstream, they agreed wordlessly.  Oren led the way, with Gornul making
sure always to keep him in sight, in case something even more bizarre
should happen.
        The two of them came to a road, which crossed over the stream by a
high,
arcing bridge.  Without speaking, they agreed to cross the road and keep
going.
        Oren momentarily disappeared behind a group of trees.  All Gornul
heard
was "Holy!"  He rushed forward to see what Oren saw and almost fell.
Immediately in front of him was an endless sea of grey.  It wasn't water.
It wasn't fog.  It wasn't anything.  He couldn't even see a dropoff where
the land ended.  It was just an endless sea of nothing.
        Yet from that sea, there came sounds.  They could hear whispered
voices,
and occasionally, quiet hoots like a telephone dialing.  The overall effect
was more than freaky, and Oren found himself shaking and holding back tears
of fear.
        As one, they looked over to the stream.  The water left it's course
soundlessly and drifted off, breaking into bubbles, into smaller bubbles,
then into a fine mist, and eventually ceasing to be.
        "Let's get out of here." said Oren.  Gornul agreed.
        The otter and the dragon went back to the road and followed it in a
generally southwest direction.  They passed by Gornul's cave once again,
followed by Oren's pond.  In fact, they passed right by his souvenir stand
from which he once sold books and posters over the web.
        The road they walked on seemed awfully deserted, as did the area
through
which it ran.  There seemed to be a lot of nothing to the right and to the
left.  Eventually, it passed close to a big red barn.  "What have we here?"
asked Oren, rushing excitedly forward.
        "Look at the silo." said Gornul.
        He did.  Painted on the side of the silo was a huge cartoon skunk.
"This
must be Duster's Skunk Barn!"
        "Are we sure we want to go in there?"
        "Oh, come on!"  Oren led his friend into the barn.  There was a
hayloft
full of books, as well as statues, pictures and toy skunks everywhere.
There were no people.
        "Of course there are no people." said Gornul.  "Duster isn't real.
She's
your stuffed toy."
        Oren picked up a toy skunk with pink membrane wings.  "Might as
well bring
her along then."
        As they headed out of the barn, Gornul pointed to something in the
distance.  "What's that?" he asked.
        Oren could just make it out.  It was a red and blue building
surrounded by
columns, and on top was a blue onion dome.  "I recognize that building!
That's Underland!"
        "Jesse's site!"
        "Right!  Let's go!"
        Jesse Roo, who had gone from being a skinny blonde teenage boy to a
blue
winged kangaroo, hopped out to meet his visitors halfway.  "Oren?  Gornul?"
he asked.  "Please tell me you guys are real!"
        "We're real." said the two in unison.
        "Oh man, you won't believe what's going on.  The whole Roo family
is in
there.  Soren, Washi, Anya, Exor... they're all there, and they're all
brainless!"
        "I thought your characters were brainless anyway." Oren noted.
        "Not like this.  It's like they're robots with brain damage.
Anya... She
just goes from person to person sticking out her tongue.  And Soren keeps
shouting "HI!!!  I'm about to go nuts!"
        "I say we avoid Underland." Gornul suggested.
        "Wherever you guys are going," said the kangaroo.  "Take me with you!"
        From that point, they went south until they found a dirt road.
Following
it, they began to discuss what could possibly be happening.
        "Maybe we got sucked inside our computers." said Jesse.
        "I don't remember that happening.  In fact, I don't remember a thing."
        "The last thing I remember is checking my mail." said Oren.  "The next
thing I knew, I was standing in front of a real mailbox.  Hmm... I never
did open that mail."
        "Hello!" someone called.  The three boys looked up the hill ahead to a
big, steel fortress.  From atop the battlements, a four-armed figure was
waving to them.  Stretching out an enormous pair of bird wings, the
creature sailed gracefully to the ground and lit in front of the group.
"Hey, guys.  It's me, WOLF Double-Oh-Thirteen."
        "Wolf!  Hey!" Oren exclaimed.  By this time, he was past the point of
disoriented panic and was at the "glad to see you're here, too." stage.
        "I was wondering if there were any other people here."  Said WOLF.
"Won't
you come inside for awhile?"
        The boys nodded and accompanied the four-armed thing into his
fortress.
        *****

        "And that's when we arrived here." said Oren between bites of
fish-on-a-stick.  "Four people turned into their on-line personae, Five
web-sites made into physical reality, and that mysterious grey NOTHING.
Those are all the clues we have to go on.
        "Wow." said WOLF.  "I had no idea.  But have you noticed something?"
        "What?"
        "All of these sites are part of your Virtual Furry World web-ring.
If the
pattern holds, the other members are going to be here as well."
        There was a knock at the door.  WOLF answered it, and discovered a
leopard
sitting there and shivering in fright.
        "Ramen?"
        "WOLF?" said the leopard.  "What is going on?"
        *****

        "Do you think we'll be able to find Dan?" asked Ramen as he padded
along
on four leopard feet."
        "I don't know, but we've got to try." said Oren.  "Hey, is that
your tree
over there?"
        "Yep.  That's my site." Ramen answered.
        "Nice."
        "Ramen's got a point." said Jesse.  "So far, we've all had our
sites turn
into relatively small places.  The name of Dan's site is "Raccoon City."
        "We're almost there." said WOLF.  "Gornul, why don't you and I take
to the
air and see if we can spot anything to give us an indication where he is."
        Gornul hesitated, looking worriedly to Oren.
        "Don't worry." said the otter.  "You'll have WOLF with you."
        "I can fly, too." said Jesse.
        "Great.  You take the air.  Ramen and I will search on the ground."
        As it turned out, Dan wasn't hard to spot at all.  In that entire
city,
the only living thing was a raccoon in a striped shirt.
        Soon, WOLF was in the middle of the street hugging Dan with all
four arms
while the raccoon sobbed his story.  "I was so scared.  I aws a raccoon,
and I aws in this big huge city withno one else in it!"
        Oren looked to the North.  "That's Light's mountain out yonder."
        "What are those woods inbetween here and there?" asked Gornul.
        "They can only be Plushie Forest.  Come on, guys.  Light is out there
somewhere, alone and probably scared to death."
        Once again, the group set out.  They were a motley crew to be sure; an
otter, a dragon, a winged kangaroo, a leopard, a raccoon and a freak.
        The Plushie Forest was a lot more dark and foreboding than anyone had
anticipated.  Animal noises filled the air, despite everyone's belief that
they were the only living things around.
        At one point, Gornul swore that he saw a plush rabbit go scampering
into
the underbrush.
        Eventually, The band entered a clearing, and the trees gave way to
a white
cottony plant.
        "Awht is this stuff?" asked Dan.
        "Awht?"
        Dan grimaced.  "Alright, so my spellnig problme somehow got
translate ntio
speech.  Cut me smoe slack."
        Ramen couldn't help himself.  He was rolling on the ground, laughing
hysterically.
        Oren was more concerned about the plants.  He rolled some of the
cottony
material between his thumb and paw.  "This is pufflin!" he declared.
        "It's what?"
        "Pufflin!  The alien fiber that brings plushies to life."  He
looked at
the toy skunk he'd been carrying, and immediately tore a small hole in it.
        "What are oyu doing?" Dan inquired as he watched Oren take the
stuffing
out.  He knew the answer of course.  Oren emptied the last of the stuffing
and re-filled the skunk with Pufflin.
        "Ow!" said Duster.  "Quit poking my insides around!"
        "It worked!" Oren exclaimed with a smile on his muzzle.  "She's
alive!"
        "I AM alive." said Duster, curiously.  "That's strange."  She looked
around experimentally.  "Why am I alive?  And what's with all of you?"
        "Good question." said Oren.  "It looks like reality is a bit
topsy-turvy
right now."
        "Hey!" cried Dan.  "Awht if that's it?  Maybe reality itselfhas
changed!"
        "What do you mean?"
        "What if the reason we're here is because something happened to
reality?
Maybe the physical wrold doesn't even exist any more and we're all on the
mental pailn?"
        "Interesting theory."
        Just then, a shadow glided over the ground.  An enormous eagle with an
animal in its claws flew above the groups heads to light on a tree branch
behind them.  "I was wondering when you guys would show up." said the bird.
        "Light?"
        "At your service." said the eagle as she dropped to the ground,
morphing
as she went from an eagle to an otter.  She picked up the animal she'd been
carrying- a stuffed humanoid weasel.
        "Sira!" cried Duster.  The winged skunk ran forward and took her limp
compatriot.
        "I found this on an island out east of my Story Mountain.  I
figured in
must belong to you, Oren, so I realized you must be closeby."
        "Oh?"
        "I found your pond, but there was nobody there.  I figured everyone
must
have gone out looking for each other.  So I came back this way to wait for
you to find me."
        "So do you have any idea what we're all doing here?" asked Ramen.
        "Not a clue." Light replied.
        "I think I know." said an unfamiliar voice.
        Everyone looked over to see Sira propping herself up on one arm while
Duster stuffed her full of pufflin.
        "So what is it?" asked Gornul.
        "Haven't you noticed... everything here, us, the environment,
everything,
is shaped by thought.  Either it's real thought, like feelings, imagination
and self-image, or else it's artificial thought, like the internet.  I
think Dan is right.  We're on the mental plain."
        "Psionic." said Oren, pointing to Sira with his thumb, as if that
explained it all.
        "So how did we get here?"
        "There's only one thing I can think of.  Douglas Adams, the famous
author,
once said that if we ever figured out the universe, it would... That's
enough stuffing, Duster.  Thank you.  ...it would be replaced with
something even more perplexing.  I think that the physical plain has
somehow ceased to exist."
        Everyone shuddered.
        "I don't want to ponder that." said Jesse.  "I think we should get
going.
Isn't there still another site somewhere around here?"
        "Cartoonia." said Light.  "It's a city out to the northeast run by
some
gal calling herself 'the Empress'."
        And so, the group set out once again.  Oren soon found himself back
on the
road he'd come down, trudging past his pond with its souvenir stand, over
the bridge, past Gornul's cave, and up to the city of Cartoonia.
        Cartoon people, especially cats and dogs, were everywhere.
        "Welcome to Cartoonia." said a blue-skinned woman.  "I'm Bianca."
        "I'm Oren.  These are..."
        "Look, I don't really care, all right?  I'm here to greet you
because I'm
everybody's favorite character."  Unexpectedly, she smiled and said "Don't
forget to come to my castle!" and promptly vanished.
        "I wonder if everything around here is as weird as her." said Ramen.
        WOLF cleared his throat.
        "Sorry.  Forgot where I was."
        It didn't take long to find the Empress.  She was sitting on the
edge of a
cliff, overlooking what should have been the sea.  Instead, it was the
eerie grey void Oren and Gornul had seen before.
        "Can you hear them?" asked the empress without turning around.
        "Hear who?"
        "Those poor souls trapped out there as pools of thought."
        "Huh?" was Dan's response.
        Ramen let out a "Meow?"
        "I think I understand." said Oren.  "That's the rest of the mental
plane!"
        Everyone looked to the otter for further explanation.
        "If Sira's theory is true, then the physical world no longer
exists.  All
that's left is thought!  But we were prepared.  We all have strong
imaginations, and we had internet sites specifically designed to suggest
physical geography, and they were all linked together.  Our thoughts and
our computers thoughts worked together to create our bodies and our world."
        "But what about THEM?" asked the Empress.
        Oren put his paws to the sides of his mouth.  "HEY!" he called.  The
whispers stopped.  It was chilling.  "Everyone come over here!  Come in
here and imagine physical bodies for yourselves!  That's all you have to do!"
        For a long time, there was only silence, then slowly, a small furry
figure
began to form out of the nothingness.  A rat stepped out onto the imaginary
land, patting his body to make sure it was real.
        "MattRat?" asked Gornul in amazement.
        "Of course." said Oren.  He was always close to us on the internet,
and he
has a powerful imagination."
        Others followed.  Many were people.  Most were animals to some degree.
One by one, the filtered out of the void into the Virtual World.
        *****

        A month had passed since that first strange and confusing day.  Most
everyone had settled in happily, or at least as well as could be expected.
Raccoon city was filling up, as were Cartoonia, and even Underland.  The
Fortress of Eternity was fully manned, and the various libraries and art
museums were quickly becoming large employers.  A few new "sites" had even
been created.  Some ferrets were building an enormous city-sized playground
to the south of the Underland temple.  MattRat had even managed to conjure
up a whole new peninsula, which he dubbed "the Matthias Zone".
        But it wasn't enough.
        Oren and Gornul waved a fond farewell as their ship, manned by a
crew of
toons and plushies, sailed into the void.  There were lost souls out there,
existing only as thought.  Someone had to go out and show them the way to
what was left of reality.
        Though they were sad to leave their homes behind, the prospect of
bringing
home new friends made it worthwhile.
        It was going to be interesting.



-Oren the Otter
8=-3
tlhaQ biQ Ha'DIbaH
The Changing Workplace: http://www.geocities.com/duster_skunk/strips.htm