Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter 1: Rude Awakening

Dreams, things that are part of sleep. For most, these are vaguely remembered things that leave one with anything from a sensation of wellbeing to puzzling enigma. Other times they are confusing and worse; bad dreams, even nightmares trouble nearly all mammals from time to time. The best one hopes for with these is that they awaken soon and that the memory of it fades away quickly. For one rabbit doe, the bad dream just went on and on. It is the same thing over and over again; like a phonograph record with a bad track that keeps bumping back to that single groove time after time. There is a feeling of excited satisfaction and accomplishment at the beginning. Then comes the confusion; yells of surprise that quickly become calls then cries for help. Unlike many of her species, this doe is most difficult to throw into a panic; there is a call made to security for assistance. The call is acknowledged and help being sent. Next, escape moves.

“Head for one of the emergency sets of stairs and get out,” she thinks as she crawls on the floor with one side against a wall.

The goal is in sight when something (someone?) pounces on her. Though her scenting is not as good as many other species of mammals the scent of what has her is decidedly different from anything she has ever before experienced. It, in its own way, screams “ALIEN!” Now, wild panic hits and she kicks with her strong legs and tries to claw her captor with her finger claws. None of it has any effect on whomever/whatever holds her. Something wraps around her, it’s soft, incredibly soft, but it pins her arms to her sides then engulfs her legs. It wraps around her head last and….

“Please, please, let me wake up!” she thought begs time and again.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Something touches her. After an eternity of nothing but the dream, the doe’s stimulation starved mind grabs hold of that sensation like a drowning mammal grasps a last second lifeline. It seems to be a hand. Another joins it and they move over her body in exploration, feeling over her entire form. At another time, she would consider the ‘liberties’ being taken as slap and kick worthy. But now, now she drank in their touch as if it were the sweetest thing she had ever known in her entire lifetime!

“Please, please, please get me out of this!!” she mentally plead.

The hands went away and she went into a virtual panic.

“No, NO, please don’t leave me!”

This was worse than the nightmare! To have someone find her then go away. Another sensation, this felt like a small tremor, a quiver. It happened several times more then ceased. The next stimulus(?) was at her left arm; it felt like something very narrow (pointed?) moved down from about her shoulder to her wrist. It happened five times. Next, it happened on her right side arm, then from the lower back of her neck down to the small of her back.

“What is going on?” she wondered.

All of these roused and focused her long languished mind.

“I…I’m wrapped up in something, she mused. “Are they trying to cut through it?”

The idea of a sharp knife being used so close to her pelt should concern her but, instead, it increased her excitement and desire to be free once more.

“If they are, they don’t appear to be getting through,” her logic pointed out.

The pressuring’s stopped.

“Don’t give up! Please don’t give up!!”

Another run down her left arm.

Pause.

Right arm.

Indeterminate long break.

Again, a pressure point at her upper left arm, then another sensation. Heat, a concentrated point of near searing heat. It moved down the outside of her arm, over her wrist and hand, and down her leg to stop at the bottom of her footpaw whereupon it moved away. Almost immediately that point was pressed onto the bunny’s upper right shoulder. Nothing happened and it was taken away. In the interim, two other things claimed her attention; a feeling of coolness on her left side, and, she could move her arm! Point pressed on her right shoulder a couple of inches from the side of her neck, the heat as it traced its painful way out to her upper arm and then down the length of her right side. Reflexively, she tried her right arm and found that it was free as well. Her feeling of joy and excitement at her impending freedom went by the wayside as she noticed something else, she couldn’t breathe. Bringing up her arms, the doe tried to get hold of what covered her face but was unable to get any purchase on the material with her fingers or even her claws.

“Great Maker, I’m going to suffocate!”

Still trying to claw at the material with one hand, she waved her other arm up and down in an attempt to show distress. Hot point at the top front of her head at the center of her forehead, it went backwards then down the back of her head, neck, and back to stop midway down her back. Hands grab the open edges and peel them apart, then shove forward. The material comes away and the rabbit woman gulps in great gasps of air.

“Sorry for the delays, had to keep reheating the knife for it to work.”

The voice sounds sincerely apologetic, and male. There is a distinct scent of musk in the air, it says ‘fox’. It didn’t matter. An instant later, her rescuer has a 26-year old bunny doe plastered to the front of his body, her arms wrapped tight around him with her face pressing into his chest.

“Don’t leave me! Please, don’t ever leave me!” she implored wholeheartedly.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Sleep, real true and, as far she knew, dreamless. This was what she wanted for the rest of her life. Add in the feel of a real bed that felt truly right for her and she wasn’t all that sure she wanted to wake up ever again. Still, she roused to a half and half state at times and memories and events intruded. Memories of her burn lines being treated with some kind of gel that was amazingly effective at soothing down the hurt. Being wrapped up in a thin blanket of some kind of fabric then another one placed round that one. The second one was like an oversized sheet of aluminum foil but less stiff, much more supple. Being fitted into a harness then hoisted unto her vulpine rescuer’s back. A long slow trek up a seemingly endless staircase with only the odd glow of some green light to see by. Then, daylight, real, natural daylight. Clouds in the sky and gentle breeze blowing. Voices of others and hands that took her off of the tod’s back. They were taking her away from him.

“No! NO!! Leave me alone!!” she screamed as she fought with all she had in her.

“Leave her be!” snapped her rescuer’s voice. “I’ll carry her in.”

Arms scooped her up and with his familiar scent in her nose, she clung to this fox for all she was worth. He stepped into a vehicle and then settled her in his lap. A gentle paw stroked soothingly over her ears.

“I’m here,” she heard him say. “I’ll stay with you as long as you wish.”

Thusly assured, she dropped into the dreamless slumber.

During one of her half-awake states she heard two voices. One she knew, the other she didn’t.

“You’re spending too much time with her,” the unknown one stated.

“Oh, and you’d prefer she wake up screaming and fighting like she did at the site? You got the preliminary evaluation from the psych mammals. What part of fragile state of mind do you not understand?!” said her fox.

The other mammal started to say something more but was forestalled.

“Chief Buffalo, you want me to go on strike? Maybe leave and not come back?”

The tone of voice was soft, even silky, but there was something hard and unyielding in it. A hand took hold of one of her own and she held it to her chest.

“Stick to running this operation, Bogo. I’ll look after our survivor.”

* * * * * * * * * * *

Reluctantly, she awoke. Cracking her violet colored eyes open she found herself looking at a large window whose curtains were almost fully closed. Through the small gap a bright band of daylight shown.

“Mmmmmm, daytime. And much as I’d like to stay in this cloud of a bed….”

Rolling over onto her back she, then, sat up and stretched her arms out and then over her head while executing a jaw cracking monster of a yawn.

“Well, the sleeping beauty bunny decides to awaken,” says a voice to her left.

Eyes snapping that direction, she sees the red fox tod lounging in a comfortable padded chair that is meant more for a tiger than for himself. His clothing is casual, blue checkered flannel shirt and a pair of cargo pants with more pockets sewn on them than she would have thought possible. Over the shirt he wore a vest made of some kind of netlike material which had several pockets and pouches on it as well.

“Ready to carry almost anything and everything,” was her evaluation. “Kind of outfit that a serious hiker or backwoods type would have.”

Though she wore some kind of pajamas, she grasped the edge of her blanket to pull it up almost level with her shoulders.

“Didn’t even need ‘True Love’s first kiss’ to get it done. Though I’m sure there are a number of males that would like to have given you one,” he added with a bit of snarkiness.

“You are?” she asked.

“Hmmmm, yes, I didn’t get to introduce myself while down in the complex, did I.”

He stood out of his chair to face her, reached up with one hand to pull an imaginary hat off of his head, and gave her a deep sweeping bow.

“You see before you one Nicholas, Nick for short, P. Wilde. Jack of all trades, world traveler and…”

He winked at her.

“…occasional smuggler, and, in many cases, general and specific pain in the rear, tail, and other places for any number of mammals,” he said.

Standing upright again, he placed that invisible hat back on his head and looked her in the eye.

“And, once in a very great while, rescuer of fair damsels,” he added.

That last bit sent her mind sorting through a batch of memories.

“So, it was real, you did bring me out,” she said.

He nodded.

“You have my name and…’occupations’. May I have yours in return?”

Hesitation.

“I’m Judith…Judith L. Hopps, Judy for short. I’m a….”

A remembered security briefing came to mind. Still, he had come to get her.

“…I’m a research technician. And for reasons I can’t go into that’s all I can say.”

She saw him cock his head to one side and regard her with emerald green eyes that had her wondering if he could see more of her than just her exterior.

“I applaud you, Miss Hopps. Your awareness of security does you credit,” he said.

He went on looking at her for a time, then…

“Judy, what year is it?” he asked.

The unexpected shift in conversation caught her by surprise.

“Why, it’s 1958,” she replied.

Silence. Then she watched him reach to an end table beside her bed to pick up what she thought was some kind of picture frame.

“Your records say that you have a pretty solid mind. That, unlike a great many other rabbits, you do not easily panic,” he said. “In the recording of your call to the surface security station one can hear you are under stress…duress but you have that in control.”

He looked at the face of the frame, then back to her.

“A lot has happened since you made that call, Judy. More than you presently know.”

He handed the frame to her. Judy turned it so she could see its face. There was no picture in it. Instead, it was divided up into several different sized blocks and each had a glowing set of numbers and letters in it. The biggest block took up the bottom half of the frame. It read 9:21 AM. She marveled at this thing, wondering how they got it to work the way it did. Then, her eyes picked out another, smaller block that was labeled “YEAR”. She looked at it, then looked at it again. Judy felt a numbness creep over her. She looked to Nick and he saw the disbelieving confusion in her eyes. He felt like a heel for it but didn’t know any gentler way to break it to her.

The box labeled “YEAR” read “2019”.

Nick took the frame from her and set it back on the table.

“Everything on that time and temperature display is correct,” he told her. “Judith Lavern Hopps, daughter of Stu and Bonnie Hopps, you have been out of ‘circulation’ for 61 years.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 2: Getting Up to Speed/Deal with It

Nick Wilde’s eyes scanned the road and surrounding countryside ahead. Outside of two parallel running lines of low mountains set to the left and right sides of the road, there wasn’t much to see in the arid 40 some mile-wide valley they drove through.

“Miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles,” he mentally repeated an old local saying.

In a way, it was soothing, hardly anything to jolt eye and the mind. He canted his eyes to the right to look at his passenger. Like himself, Judy was belted in with a six-point safety harness whose anchor points were bolted to a reinforcing plate that was, in turn, hard welded and bolted to a couple of chassis frame members. In matter of fact, the whole heavy duty SUV contained an insane amount of safety and collision impact dampening devices. On top of all of that, there were four, four, emergency beacons built in that would activate if and when a forceful enough impact was detected. The fox smiled as he recalled what Bogo said about it:

“I don’t like you, Wilde, not one damned bit! But I have to have you. And that means keeping you safe and in one piece in all the ways that I can. Losing you to a traffic accident is not in the cards!”

“Gives me a nice warm feeling that he cares so much,” Nick thought with a toothy smirk.

Another look to the right to see that the expression on his charge’s face was still the same; a faraway look that gave not one indication of what she was thinking. There is a saying, a directive, among problem solving experts that ‘says’ that when someone has one or more unpleasant tasks to do that they do it/them first and as soon as possible to get things over with.

“Dandy advice that I’ve taken most of the time….”

Another glance to Judy, her expression hadn’t changed one bit.

“…but when you have a number of full on body blows to deliver you have to space them out and prioritize when they hit.”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

“How?”

One word, but it asked so much.

“Honest answer is that we don’t know,” Nick, settled back in his oversized chair, said. “Speculation is that the cocoon you were in put you into some kind of biological stasis or suspended animation. I brought up a few pieces of that material with us and the lab types are going over them with everything they have.”

He let her digest that for a few seconds.

“Miss Hopps…”

” Judy, please,” she interrupted. “After what you’ve done for me it seems a little silly to be so formal.”

“Very well, Judy.”

He paused, marshalling his thoughts.

“Judy, while you were recovering, I boned up on the predictions made in the 1950s on what they thought this time period would be like. I have to say it made some pretty interesting reading. Item; cheap, fast, and safe interplanetary travel. We’re not there. We manage to put 14 mammals on the moon and they brought back some 1500 pounds of dust and rock samples for study. As yet, no moon bases of any type. We have a non-rotating space station that’s about 900 miles up that has an average of four mammals on it at any one time. We’ve sent robot probes, flybys and orbitals, to all of the planets in our solar system and landed, successfully, landed five probes on the planet Ares. Three are rovers that travel over the surface. Thirty years ago, we launched the first space telescope, it ‘sees’ in the visible light range, into orbit. Over those years, its observations have shaken up and confounded the astronomical sciences. Two years ago, they lobbed a second space telescope into an orbit of a million miles from Terra. This one ‘sees’ in the infrared light range, and like its predecessor, it is finding things that have our science mammals having to readjust their outlooks and theories about the Universe. And we’ve managed to recover and bring back some dust and other particles from three comets plus samples from two asteroids. So, while not living up to all of the 1958 predictions on space we haven’t done too badly.”

The rabbit doe listened attentively as Nick ran down her time’s prediction list. To be honest, even with her bright eyed outlook of the future, she had tempered it with the knowledge that past predictions of what her own time period would be like had been woefully off the mark. From time to time, she asked questions to clarify something.

“Now, to other things. The world population has almost tripled since you got ‘wrapped up’. There are places, all too many, where life is pretty much to downright shaky. There seems to be more conflicts going on in the world today than in your time but I’m not so sure that the number has grown, more of a case that we so easily know of them these days. Our communications system is very good now and as a result it’s more and more difficult for governments and other groups to keep things secret.”

He pulled something out of a shirt pocket and held it up for Judy to see. It was rectangular in shape, with the corners rounded off, that measured some six inches by two and a half inches.

“This is referred to as a smart phone. With it, one can talk to anyone else in the world with a similar device and a connection to the communication net. And, by the way, no wires needed.”

He used it to take a few pictures of her (no film to develop!) and even a short movie (with sound!) and showed all of that to her. Then, showed her that he could access and play Hollywood movies and shows on it. He shifted to another ‘site’ and pulled up all kinds of scientific information. There were literally thousands of short movies, videos Nick called them, explaining anything from basic science to incredibly advanced theories, hypotheses, and speculations into things that she had never heard of in her time.

“And anyone can…access these?” she asked.

“That, and even participate if they wish. There are increasing numbers of small science projects that are being ‘crowd funded’. That means that the people doing the project have, usually, explained what they are working on and are asking mammals to contribute money towards that project. With access to so many people there is quite a bit of this going on.”

It was sundown when they called a stop. Judy’s mind was close to reeling with all the stuff she had learned.

“Get a good rest tonight, Fluff. I’ve stalled off the Chief about as long as I can and he insists on doing a debriefing of you. That is set for tomorrow,” Nick told her.

“Sigh, that’s to be expected,” she replied.

“A warning to you, Bogo, and some who work for him, have a bad habit of not knowing when to let up or quit. So be prepared to be pushed hard.”

“Will you be there?” Judy asked.

He heard the anxiety in her voice.

“Yes, if you want me to be.”

“I do want you, there.”

“Alright, I will be.”

“Nick, one more thing.”

“And that is?”

“Have you found any others?”

He knew whom she referred to.

“Nope. So far, you are the only one.”

* * * * * * * * * * *

“What are you doing here, Wilde!” growled Bogo.

“I am here at the request of the lady,” Nick said in a nonchalant voice tone.

“You can leave,” the cape buffalo said.

“I could, but I’m not going to,” said the fox, coolly.

Judy marveled at the interchange. Bogo out massed Nick several times over and likely out muscled him by at least a multiple of four. Still, her fox showed no sign of concern.

“He’s either crazy or there’s something super important about him that keeps that big bull in check,” she guessed.

The exchange decided something for her and she steeled herself for what she was sure would be a difficult time over the next several or so minutes.

“Miss Hopps, take the seat in front of the table,” Bogo directed.

As she did so, Nick hauled a chair out of a corner of the Spartan room, set it close to hers, turned the back of it towards the table, and then seated himself in it where his chin rested on the top of the chair back. The table was beveled at its ends which gave it the look of a boomerang, with her chair, several sizes too big for her, situated in front of the center of the curve. Sitting in three chairs on the other side, were, right to left, a tiger, a moose, and the biggest gray wolf she had ever seen.

“All of this designed to make me feel small, vulnerable, and intimidated,” she evaluated.

That was fine, it stiffened her resolve.

“Judith Lavern Hopps, this debriefing is in session,” declared the Moose, the biggest of the three.

“Now!” she thought.

“Gentle mammals, before we go any further, I will point out something that needs to be addressed here and now!” Judy stated.

Hesitation.

“And that is?”

“That I know none of you.”

She looked to where Bogo stood at one end of the table.

“Nor you.”

Then, she looked at Nick.

“And while I am grateful for your rescue of me, I do not really know who or what you are, either.”

Her eyes returned to the moose.

“None of you have shown me any security clearance paperwork and even if you did I would have no way to authenticate it.”

Nick fought down an urge.

“As such, due to the nature of my work, workplace, and in adherence to my security training and directives…”

Nick struggled.

“…I must, respectfully, decline to say anything unless and until you have proven, to my satisfaction, that you have the proper clearances and that they are valid.”

Silence, though, if anyone bothered to look his way, they would have seen the room’s one vulpine shaking. It took a few seconds for the others to process her statement and its meaning. One could hear the grinding of teeth coming from Bogo’s direction.

“Miss Hopps, I can assure you….” started the moose.

A hand paw shot up, forestalling any further words.

“Until I am convinced that you, all of you, do have clearances, and the proper ones, there is nothing further to say or discuss!”

Impasse.

“She’s…snicker…got you…giggle…and even me…chuckle…dead to rights on that!” the shaking Nick gasped out.

He gave the bunny a bright eyed look of admiration.

“I said I admired your security awareness. Good call, Fluff. Damn good, and proper, call!”

Yipping vulpine laughter fills the room for a long time.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

“Good grief! I get any closer to Bogo, or him to me, I’ll end up with a bad case of heat burn!” Nick thought as he looked at the fuming buffalo. “And he grinds his teeth any harder the tooth fairy is going to have to lug in twenty plus pounds of quarters to purchase the damage.”

The Chief looked up from the papers he had read through several times. They were copies of the 1950s National Secrets Act and Judy Hopps’s clearance paperwork and security record.

“Not helping, Wilde,” he said.

“Chief, own up. You know she’s right. By the regs, we have to prove to her that; one, we are who we say we are and, two, that any of us have the clearances to hear what she has to say,” Nick reiterated. “She doesn’t recognize any of us and since her last security chief, one Samuel H. Gordon, departed this mortal world eleven years ago, there’s no one around that she knows with the authority to tell her any differently.”

Bogo thought that over.

“You don’t think any amount of paperwork will convince her otherwise?” he asked.

“Doubtful. I mean, what would authentic security clearance and authorization paperwork look like these days? Add to that that she’s already figured out that, with our advances in imagery and printing, that virtually anything can be forged…”

“How do you know that she knows that?”

“She told me right after the debrief that didn’t happen.”

Nick thought something over for a few seconds, then…

“On top of that, I think she has suspicions that she might be the subject of some elaborate deception to convince her to talk,” he added. “All things considered, I don’t think I can really fault her on that account.”

Nick could almost hear the gearworks running in Bogo’s head.

“So, what do we do?”

“You’re asking me?” Nick said with raised eyebrows.

“Wilde, if there’s anyone who can convince, wheedle, trick her into telling us what she knows, it’s you! I’ve interviewed some of the mammals you’ve pulled out of bad situations and they all agree that you were the only one who could have done the job successfully. So, I’m assigning you the task of convincing Hopps to tell us what she knows.”

“My way?” Nick asked.

“As long as you get the results we need.”

“Alright, I’ve got a few things in mind that I think will get us there. I do need one thing from you involving this.”

“What is that?”

“I need her security clearance elevated to my level.”

Pause.

“You’re serious,” Bogo said at last.

“Very. Part of my idea involves her having access to stuff that only you, I, and a very few others are cleared for. After all, how’s she going to trust us if we don’t trust her?”

The chief thought on that for a few heartbeats.

“Very well, it’ll take about six weeks for this to clear…”

Nick gave him a look of exasperation.

“…but I can…no, wait.”

Bogo tapped his intercom.

“Miss Howlverson, is there anyone out there with you?” he asked.

“Yes sir.”

“Who are they?”

“Mr. Potter and Mr. Benson are here for the 2:00 PM appointment…”

Pause.

“…and the mail room carrier has just shown up.”

“Corral all of them and bring them into the office. Bring your recorder with you.”

Seconds later, the door opened and in trooped Miss Howlverson, a cheetah, a male otter, a deer stag, and a female elk.

“You are all here to act as witnesses to a verbal order I am about to give,” Bogo said. “Howlverson, you know the drill.”

The cheetah held up something she had in her right paw.

“This is a UHD audio/video recorder used for situations like this,” she explained to the three other mammals. “As I point it at you, I need you to state your full name, service number, and job position.”

One by one, the three did as instructed, then Howlverson turned the recorder to herself and she did the same. That done, she stepped back until she had Bogo, Nick, and the other three all in the field of view. She nodded to her boss.

“Mr. Nicholas Piberius Wilde has requested that the security clearance of one Judith Lavern Hopps be upgraded from its present level. I have made the decision to grant his request.”

He looked to his receptionist.

“Fill out all of the needed papers and I’ll sign them when they are ready.”

The cheetah fem nodded.

“However, due to the need to get things going as quickly as possible, I do not have the time to wait for the request to complete its way through the channels. So, as of…”

Bogo looked at the digital clock on his desk.

“…2:11 PM local time on the 8th of May, 2019, I elevate Miss Hopps’s clearance from 3 Beta to 5 Alpha.”

He looked to the witnesses.

“Do you understand and stand witness to all of this?” he asked.

Four mammals answered “Yes.”

“Very well, thank you for standing in. Mr. Potter and Mr. Benson, please wait outside. We’ll begin our meeting in a few more minutes.”

With that, the four filed out of the room and Howlverson closed the door behind her.

“You’ve got what you want, make it worth the effort,” Bogo said.

“I’m on it,” Nick said as he got up and headed for the door.

“And Wilde.”

“Yes?”

“Be aware that we have hypno-interrogation drugs available that make anything from her time look like distilled water.”

The fox nodded once, then left.

Chapter Text

Chapter 3: Progress

“Come in, Nick,” Judy called at the knock on her door.

That door opened and the fox trooped in, dragging some kind of rolling table behind him.

“So that’s what that other noise was,” she thought.

“Develop x-ray vision, Fluff?” he asked as he stopped in the middle of the big living room.

“Now wouldn’t that be something,” Judy said as she stood up. “But, no. You, one; have a particular way of knocking that my other visitors don’t and, two; I could hear your paw steps, again, a pattern distinct to you, a few seconds before you got to the door.”

Nick went to one side of the room, grabbed a table that was there, and pulled it out to the center of the room. He, then, began pushing all of the other furniture up against the walls.

“I know rabbits are supposed to have…grunt…good hearing but as I tend to be light on my paws yours has to be bordering on exceptional. Has it always been like that?”

“Hmmmmm, its always been pretty good but, come to think of it, I think it’s become better since I arrived here,” she said as she helped him push one of the big sofas to a wall.

“I think you should be tested. I can set up an appointment with the site audiologist for tomorrow if that’s alright with you.”

“Mmmmm, sure, why not,” she replied as they shoved the second sofa to the wall.

“What’s this all about?” Judy asked.

“Give me some more time then I’ll explain,” he said

With only the one table and that rolling one at the middle of the room, Nick began pulling items out of boxes and bags lying on his cart. Four fine grillwork surfaced cylinders a little over a foot tall and about four inches in diameter were placed at the left and right ends of the table. The two furthest back were a couple feet in from the ends while the other two were centered depth wise and a couple of inches from the ends. Four more such cylinders, on tripod stands, were set up; two some eight feet, each, to the left and right and four feet forward of the table. The other pair were set some ten to eleven feet in front of the table and almost even with its ends.

“Bit of news for you, Jude…”

“Jude! Where did you hear that?!” she demanded. “Only my dad called me that!”

“He did, though the full version was ‘Jude the Dude’.”

Judith’s ears flamed in embarrassment.

“Okay, fox boy, where did you…”

She stopped as a mental ‘click’ in her mind got her attention.

“That was in my records?!”

“Sure is. Thing to remember, Fluff, is that ole J. Edgar’s mammals did serious in depth investigations on the mammals assigned to your complex,” Nick said as he pushed that rolling table to the back wall. “That included nicknames and pet names.”

Judy was about to retort in anger when she suddenly came to another conclusion.

“Nick’s seen my security records, those are classified! If he has access to them, that means….”

“Nick, I know I’m not supposed to ask but…what’s your security clearance rating?”

“You’re right, you shouldn’t ask, and I shouldn’t tell you. But, seeing as that your clearance is the same as mine, telling you won’t be a problem. My rating is 5 Alpha,” he said.

The expression of astonished disbelief on Judy’s face was priceless; 5 Alpha was just one step, a small one, if the shop talk was to be believed, below that of the President’s clearance rating!

“That’s not my rating! It’s…”

She stopped just in time. Still, she had built up a ‘head’ of mental steam and had to let it out somehow.

“Theoretically, it’s 3 Beta!” she got out.

“That it was, until a little over three hours ago. I talked Chief Buffalo Buns into jacking it up to my level.” Nick said as he set a one-inch-high by two foot by two-foot silver metallic case at the center of the table top.

The last thing Nick took off that roll about was a bare bones straight-backed chair which he set in front of the table.

“Have a seat…Jude,” he said with both a visual and tonal smirk.

“Uuuugh!” she growled in aggravation, but sat on the chair.

From there, she looked up at…her fox.

“Alright, assuming that what you have told me isn’t some kind of concocted tale, why would you go to the trouble of elevating my rating? I know that is not a remotely easy thing to accomplish!” she says.

“Kind of easy if the ‘ducks’ all line up right. Judy, that rating change is necessary because you need access to stuff that your previous one does not allow for.”

He sat himself on the table.

“Item; secret complex working on various projects requiring serious levels of energy has something go haywire. There are four calls made to the surface security mammals. Only one of those calls gives any remotely useful information.”

He got off the table and then opened up that case. The top swung up on a back set of hinges to reveal a screen that looks similar (except for its smaller size) to the big flat screen TV that hung from one of the room’s walls. In the bottom part of the case is a keyboard. Nick taps a key and the screen lights.

“Face the screen and sit straight upright,” he instructed as he tapped a few more keys.

Judy did as instructed, and Nick stepped back from the table to stand behind and to her left. From all eight cylinders came the clacking sound of a military telephone, then….

“Security, here.”

“This is Judith L. Hopps, service number 0784237. I am on the 23rd level speaking from phone number 2309.”

Judy heard the tension in her own voice.

“Something is happening down here. There’s sounds of mammals yelling and calling out and I think some of them are running for some reason. There are other sounds that I can’t identify but, if I didn’t know better, I’d say we were under some kind of attack!”

“Miss Hopps, are you sure of all of that?”

The questioning doubt in the talker’s voice was plainly evident.

“Quite sure. The sounds are getting louder and…”

Even though she knew what was coming, Judy shrank backwards in the chair. The blood chilling shriek of a mammal who was utterly terrified issued from all of the speakers! That sound changed the security guard’s attitude in an instant.

“Miss Hopps! You are to egress to the surface immediately! Get to any emergency exit you can and get out of there, now!”

“Understand. Leaving this phone off hook.”

“Whatever! Just get moving!”

“Judy, close your eyes and just listen,” Nick told her.

She did. Nothing, nothing, noth…. Her ears twitched, there was something there, something that she could just make out. Some kind of padding sound. Then, it was gone.

“You heard it,” Nick said.

“Yes, I did,” she replied.

She opened her eyes to look at him.

“What’s making the sound?” she asked.

“No one has any real idea of whatever it is looks like, but a few years ago, they developed filtering and sensing equipment good enough to isolate that sound. They gave it to a team of bioscience, computer, and robotics mammals to try to duplicate it and after nearly a year’s worth of work they came up with this.”

Stepping forward, Nick tapped on some more keys. The screen lit up and on it was something that had eight articulating legs, four each on opposite sides of its central body. At the end of those legs there were pads of some type. It moved, more like loped, along on a floor that looked to be the same as the ones in the complex.

“Its’ a little over eight feet long,” she heard Nick say. “Weighs 417 pounds, and the sound it makes is a dead on match for what got pulled off of the security tape.”

Nick looked at Judy.

“And it was going the same way you went down that corridor.”

The hackles on the back of her neck stood at full attention and it felt like every bit of her fur was puffed out as well.

“I…it needs one…no, two pairs of arms,” she said.

Nick froze the screen, then enlarged the image.

“Where?”

“Here, here, here, and here,” she said, pointing to spots on the screen.

She was silent for a few heartbeats.

“Nick, will you stay with me tonight?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Because I know I’m going to have that nightmare once again.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 4: Details

“No, no, go away! Don’t!” cry/moans Judy in her sleep.

Nick hugged her a little tighter to him and her grip on him tightened up while she tried to bury her head, literally, in his chest.

“I’m here, Fluff. No one’s going to get you,” he whispered to her as he started using one of his hands to rhythmically flap thump her on her back.

While Judy wore pajamas Nick was down to just his undershorts. He needed to give her as much contact as possible so as to help sooth her. Suddenly, Judy squealed and her arms around him felt like being in the grip of a circular constriction vice.

“Whoa, it’s like she’s trying to merge her body inside of mine!” the fox thought as he did his best to tactilely reassure the bunny while trying to keep breathing. “Humph, wouldn’t that be something if she managed to do it. Talk about getting in touch with your inner bunny!”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

After getting the four arm points down, Nick quizzed Judy on how she knew this.

“Really, I don’t know, but, when whatever it was pounced, that’s the only way I can describe it, on me it grabbed me….”

She stopped, looked it Nick for a few seconds with that ‘’thinking’ expression on her that he’d come to know. He was wearing that blue checked long loose sleeved shirt of his with that vest over it.

“Nick, do you have a set of protective gloves on you?” she asked.

He reached to a pouch pocket, opened it, and extracted a pair of gloves.

“Made of Kevlaar III and proof against most sharp edged weapons,” he said as he slipped them on his paws.

Judy stood up, went over to the back wall, then got down on her hands and knees with her left side brushing up against the wall.

“Nick, come here and stand within arm’s reach behind me,” she directed.

He did as she asked.

“Now, when I say ‘Mark!’ grab me here…”

She indicated the areas on her sides just a few inches above her waist.

“…then haul me up into the air and hold me out at arm’s length. As soon as I’m up, I’m going to start kicking my legs hard and flailing my arms, so get a good hard grip on me,” Judy said.

“Got you. Okay, I’m set.”

Pause.

“Mark!”

The swiftness of his move was astonishing, it mimicked what happened to her perfectly. The only thing missing was that scent. As promised, Judy kicked and flailed away, her hands clawing at those that held her.

“Press your thumbs in harder!” she called out.

He did.

“That’s it! That’s the grip! Now, move me in closer to you. Be aware that I’m going to be kicking you.”

“Rog.”

One foot, then the other just made contact.

“A little closer.”

Better contact but not like the ones she remembered.

“Still closer.”

There, there it was!

“That’s it! That’s how far I was from the front of that…thing…being,” Judy said.

“Fifteen to sixteen inches,” Nick said as he set her, feet first, down on the floor. “For its size, this thing either has a short reach or it crooked its arms for some reason.”

“Might have had to hold me closer so it could wrap me up with its other set of arms?” Judy queried.

“Maybe. Any idea on how steady its hold on you was?”

She thought on that.

“I was thrashing around so much that I really can’t say.”

“Off top of your head, best guess.”

“Stiff and steady,” Judy threw out. “Oh, and it seemed that your hands and the…alien’s are about the same size.”

Another few seconds consideration.

“Yours might be a shade bigger,” she added.

“Any finger digits? If so, how many?” Nick asked as he typed away furiously on the laptop’s keyboard.

Violet eyes close and she lets her mind drift for a while.

“Best guess, three,” she said at last.

“Good haul of info, Bunbun,” he said. “I’m surprised that you’re able to get so much considering the situation you were in.”

“Nick, there’s something else about this thing.”

The tone in her voice made him stop and he looked to her to see a haunted expression on her face.

“It has a scent, an…aroma that…it isn’t like anything I’ve ever come across before. It was so different…alien that it sent me into a full blown panic!”

“If you panicked, then how do you know…”

“I relived that…event Maker only knows how many times while in that cocoon. With nothing else to work with, I’m guessing that my mind analyzed it for every bit of detail it could get,” she said.

Saying nothing, Nick returned his attention to the laptop and tapped away for several more minutes. When he stopped, she saw him pull a ‘memory stick’ from one pocket and plug it into a slot in one side. Three keystrokes and a few seconds wait and then he pulled it back out. Next, he made a call on his smart phone.

“Miss Howlverson, send a runner over to Hopps’s residence. I’ve got a delivery for the Chief,” he said. “No, I can’t bring it myself as I’m staying close to Judith for the rest of the day and night.”

A few seconds wait.

“Tell Buffalo Buns that it’s none of his business why. It’s a personal matter and that both him and you are to keep your dirty minds in check!” he said, then disconnected.

“We’ve done enough for this day. How about we get your living room furniture back in place and then we’ll watch a show or two.

“Fine with me,” Judy said.

They weren’t even halfway done when there was a knock at the door. Nick answered it and Judy saw the cheetah standing outside.

“Take this to Bogo. Do not pass ‘Go!’, do not collect $200.00, straight to his lair,” Nick directed as he handed the memory stick over.

After that, they finished setting the rest of the furniture right, popped up a big batch of popcorn, selected some drinks from the ‘frig., then settled in on the sofa in front of the widescreen and started up a movie. Nick sat at one end with Judy snugged up against his side.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Judy moaned and moved restlessly against her fox. He was her anchor, her one solid point in this whirlpool of terrible dream memories.

“Ride it out, Judith. You survived six decades of it and you’ll get through this one as well. As the saying goes, ‘This too, shall pass’,” Nick murmured to her.

Chapter Text

Chapter 5: Tour and Confirmation

Nick saw Judy’s ears come up and then turn her head a couple of inches to one side.

“Someone’s coming,” she said. “They’re running.”

A second later there came a knock at the front door.

“I’ll get it,” Nick said.

He and Judy, having awoke late in the day, were having a noon breakfast when that knock came. Nick opened the door and that cheetah runner was standing there. He held out some kind of rectangular box and, first, Nick appeared to gaze into it and then pressed both of his thumbs onto the surface. That done, the runner handed over a large thick envelope and left. Nick came back to the table and sat down. He opened the packet which had another one in it and then opened that one and extracted the contents. There were two cards that he looked at, then handed them over to Judy.

“Your new, maybe I should say updated, ID and security cards,” he told her.

The other item was a memory chip that he slipped into a slot on his laptop. He spent a few minutes looking at the screen, then returned his attention to Judy.

“Chief says he’s forwarded the data you gave to that team that came up with the robot duplicate of the alien. He figures it will take up to a couple of months for them to make the changes to match the new data,” he said.

“To keep the same weight, they’ll have to shorten it up some to compensate for the mass of the arms,” Judy commented. “And with more mass at one end they’ll have to rework how it moves to keep the sound it makes the same.”

Nick nodded in agreement.

Judy worked her way through the rest of her salad before she spoke again.

“Nick.”

“Yes?”

“Last night’s…dreams reminded me of something.”

“Oh? What is that?”

“In my panic, I kicked that thing with all the strength I had. Its body, or at least the part I made contact with, didn’t have any give to it like yours did. It was like kicking a rock boulder,” Judy said.

Nick thought that one over.

“Maybe it was wearing some kind of hard armor,” he ventured.

Judy, that ”I’m thinking this over” expression on her face, didn’t say anything for a bit.

“Or, it might have a hard shell, an exoskeleton like beetles do,” she said at last.

“Hmmmm, either way, that means they’ll have to shrink it down some more to make up for it. We’d better get over to the Chief’s office and pass this on,” Nick observed.

Then, his own inspiration hit him.

“Judy, last night, during our reenactment, you were clawing at my hands. Does that mean you did the same with the alien?”

“Why, yes. I was trying to rip its hands off of me or hurt it enough to make it let go of me. Didn’t work.”

It was her turn to watch the contemplative expression on her fox’s face.

“Up and at ‘um, fluff tail. We go to Bogo’s lair right now,” he said as he stood up.

“The Chief free?” Nick asked Howlverson.

“No one’s with him right now,” the feline fem said. “I take it you’ve got something urgent you want to tell him.”

“Yup.”

She thumbed the intercom switch.

“Chief, there’s a certain annoyance factor out here, with a bunny in tow, who says they have something to tell you.”

All of them heard the long suffering sigh from the speaker.

“Send them in.”

Once in the office, Nick had Judy repeat what she had told him about the alien’s hardness. Then they gave him their two ideas about it. Bogo scribbled it all down on a paper.

“It means….” Judy started.

“…that the robot team will have to do further modifications on the model they’ve made,” Bogo completed. “Have to make it smaller to compensate for the additional weight of an exoskeleton or body armor.”

“Hmmmmm, unless that armor is very light in weight,” Nick said, thoughtfully.

Bogo gave the fox a frowning look.

“I’ve read up on some of the latest armor developments. Recently, they’ve made the first prototypes of some hard plate armor that’s barely a couple of millimeters thick and a plate of it that could cover your entire torso would weigh, maybe, about three pounds. The stuff is good against any blade type weapon and, obviously, any fist punches or foot kicks directed against it,” Nick informed Bogo.

“You do so enjoy making life difficult, Wilde,” Bogo groused, after a short pause.

“That’s what I’m here for,” Nick said, with a grin.

“Out, damned fox! Take Miss Hopps on that tour and leave me be,” the buffalo said.

They were almost to the door…

“And Wilde.”

“Yes.”

“Your idea was confirmed early this morning.”

“What idea was he referring to?” Judy inquired once they were out of the building.

“I’ll tell you about it later. Right now, I’m taking you on a tour of some of the site labs to show you the fantastic wonders of our time that they have in them,” Nick said.

The “site”, as it was referred to, looked like a small nicely laid out college campus. One large building was set at each of the four corners with several smaller buildings (Bogo’s office in one of them) scattered about within the block. Two three story apartment buildings and a pair of dormitories provided most of the onsite housing with eight individual houses for visiting guests and dignitaries (Judy inhabited the second biggest one). Numerous broadleaf trees provided shade and there were two small ponds. Organizationally, the place fell under the Dept. of Energy and they did do a lot of research in that field. What the great majority of the mammals working there didn’t know was that hidden in their midst was the agency charged with keeping an eye on the abandon complex. After clearing the entry points, Nick took Judy into a room where a male otter was waiting for them. She was aware that he had eyes on her only as she and Nick walked up to him. The look he gave her made Judy feel like she was pinned down on a dissection board.

“Judy, this is doctor Michael Commbs. He’s head of the biosciences section of our little operation,” Nick introduced. “And doc…”

“Yes?”

His eyes never left Judy.

“…you can get that idea out of your head. You don’t lay a paw on her unless she consents and even then you don’t get to do anything to her unless I consent!”

“Nicholas, I need some more blood and tissue….”

The fox brought his right arm up even with his neck and then slashed the edge of his flattened hand across his throat.

“Not happening, Commbs!”

A look to her right and Judy saw that hard unyielding look on Nick’s face.

“Nick! Biological stasis for Maker’s sake! I ran her blood sample through all of the age check tests. She hasn’t aged one day in the 61 years, four months, and 19 days that passed before you brought her out! That process would solve a tremendous amount of space travel problems! No need for a lot of life support or trip supplies for mammal crewed journeys to Ares and other planets and moons. And that’s just the bare beginning!” the small mustelid plead.

“Then you’ll do better concentrating your energies on the material that put her in that state than on her,” Nick almost growled. “And speaking of which, we’re here to see what you’ve got so far on said material.”

The otter’s beseeching expression held for a few more seconds then it changed.

“What? A grown mammal and he’s pouting?!” Judy thought.

“Well, we’ve managed to get a lot of testing done but that’s going to come to an end pretty soon,” Michael said.

“What? Why’s that?” asked Nick.

“Come with me and I’ll show you.”

They trailed him into the lab where he led them to a table that had four glass topped boxes sitting on it.

“Have a look,” Commbs said, waving a paw at the boxes.

They did.

“What the hay?!” Nick exclaimed.

In each of those containers was, presumably, a piece of the cocoon material he had brought up out of the complex. The material, all of it, had had a textured silver color. What the fox had before him was four pieces of blackened fabric (for lack of a better term) that was maybe half as thick as it originally had been and had lost at least a quarter of its original size.

“What’s happening to them?” the tod asked.

“Best guess is that they’re rotting away. We noticed the deterioration five days ago. Each of those boxes is sealed up air tight to keep oxygen out,” the scientist explained. “This one…”

He touched the leftmost box.

“…is a near pure helium atmosphere. This one is nitrogen, that one’s argon, and that one is xenon. They’ve been sealed up in there for four days.”

He looked up at Nick.

“None of it is helping slow, let alone stop, the deterioration. We’ve immersed that one big piece you brought in liquid helium, the coldest stuff we’ve got, to try to save it.”

Commbs shook his head.

“As far as we can determine, it’s wasting away just as fast as these are. In another few days, a week at the most, it’ll all be dust, if not less.”

There was a genuine, even heartfelt, note of sadness in the otter’s voice.

“Have you found anything out about it, yet?” Judy asked.

“We’ve been working fast to do as many tests and scans and such as we can before they’re all gone. As such, we haven’t had the time to do any remotely in depth analysis.”

He looked up at them.

“There is one thing we have noticed about its structure. And that is that it strongly resembles spider web silk.”

Nick took Judy to another section of the building where he “introduced” her to a large and rather intimidating looking machine. The biggest part of it was shaped like a squat barrel that lay upon its side. That ‘barrel’ had a diameter that was at least five times her height. There was a cylindrical hole, about one and a half times her height, she estimated, in the middle that ran parallel with the unit’s outer walls. Through that opening was a long flat surface that had to be a table.

“Judith L. Hopps, meet our magnetic resonance imaging machine,” he said. “This friendly, as long as you don’t have any metal on or in you, monster uses magnetic fields to see inside of one’s body. With today’s computers and the software they contain, the images it can make of any part of, or the whole, body is flat out fantastic.”

With that, he had one of the techs show her a number of images of scans they had taken of a mammal. Judy was awed at the incredibly minute details that were caught. She got to see a heart beating and she could even see the slight flexing of the outgoing arteries with each beat. An equally astonishing images of lungs as someone breathed. And ‘slice’ images of a brain that showed structures and shapes in minute detail. Then, they “zoomed in” and all of that detail became mind bogglingly insane. It was then that she thought of something.

“Nick, did they put me through this thing?”

He nodded.

“We needed to get the scans in order to, among other things, determine if you had any internal injuries. And, yes, these are your images. And there’s another reason I’ve brought you here to see these.”

He directed the tech to call up the scans of Judy’s waist.

“Because of the ‘stasis’ you were in it meant that any injuries, great or small, you received 61 years ago were still there. While doing that reenactment yesterday I thought of something and included it in the report I sent out to the Chief. He acted on it and confirmed that my idea was correct.”

Nick told the tech to zoom in slowly on that bunny waist.

“Judy, that thing held you in a pretty tight grip, a hold that is tight enough to leave some bruising. Your panicked thrashing around magnified it.”

The tech stopped zooming in and then tapped a couple of keys and the image changed. On the outsides of her waist was a sharp edged looking pattern. She could easily make out the outline of three digits that averaged four inches in length (the middle one was the longest of them, about a third of an inch longer). The tech shifted the image so that they were looking at her back and sure enough, there was the outline of what had to be an opposing thumb that was about three inches long and surprisingly broad, almost two inches wide. The tech zoomed in some more and that was when Judy saw the hairline break that ran down the middle of that….

“Two thumbs?” she questioned.

“Looks like it,” said the tech.

“You called it, Fluff. Except for the double thumb, you were right on all of it,” Nick said.

Chapter Text

Chapter 6: Forensics and Explanations

Judy examined the telephone handset for a few seconds then reached out to nudge it a tiny bit to the left. She stood before a mockup of the phone station that she had used to make her call from so many years before. They had gone all out to make it as exactly the same as the original.

“Scary,” she thought. “It’s like I’m standing in front of the real thing!”

Built into a recessed niche in the wall with metal on the back (behind the phone box) and on all sides of that recess, with the ID plates (one above and one on the left side) on the wall. There was even a card on the top front of the phone base box with the complex’s real emergency extension numbers on it! In the complex, like most other areas of the mammal world in her time, public use telephones were two different sizes and set at two, sometimes more, different heights. About five and a half feet for the taller mammals and a little under three feet for the smaller ones. Though the phones were spaced every 100 feet apart, the heights alternated. And, for the higher up phones, someone had thought to put in three recessed foot and hand holds so smaller mammals could climb up to access those in an emergency.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

“Bring up the scans of Miss Hopps’s feet and lower legs,” Nick told the MRI operator.

“Looking for bruising there?”

“Yes.”

“I can tell you that there is,” said the zebra as he brought up the desired images.

“What? Why didn’t you let someone know?” the tod asked.

“They asked to be informed of anything that was life threatening or serious. The bruising on the waist and feet and legs didn’t fit either of those requests.”

Nick decided to let it go, for now. Working his enhancing “magic”, the striped stallion brought all of it into sight. Most of the soles and backs of her feet were badly bruised as well as the lower third of the backs of her lower legs.

“I’m not the best one to ask but from the look of it she was kicking whatever it was hard or what she kicked was pretty hard in its own right,” the operator offered.

“Or both,” Nick said. “Get the medical mammals on this, we need as good a read on the forces involved to do that kind of damage.”

“Is there any way to get any idea of the shape of what it was that I kicked?” Judy asked.

They were able to do so much…”magic”, where she was concerned, with their wonder machines, why not that?

“With all of that damage, afraid not,” the equine said. “If it was from one or two impacts we could get something of an idea but….”

“Do what you can, we need anything useful that can be extracted,” Nick said.

Their next stop was at the audio analysis lab where Judy was introduced to Roy McBride, a mountain lion, and Kay Dillon, a fennec fox vixen. Judy noted the fennec giving her a long look. It wasn’t anything like the disquieting one from Commbs, this one was a mix of curiosity and something else she could not identify.

“Kay and Roy have something they want you to look at, so I leave you in their care,” Nick said.

“You’re not staying?” Judy queried.

“Want to check on something. Will be back in 30 to 40 minutes. Stay here until I get back.”

And with that, he was gone.

“Miss Hopps, please follow us,” Roy said.

They led her into an adjacent room and that’s when she saw the phone replica setup.

“Miss Hopps, what we want you to do is show us, on this, in what position you left the handset before you headed for the exit,” Kay told her as they stopped in front of the mockup.

“Alright,” she said.

Picking up the handset off of the hook, Judy then laid it on the bottom ledge of the recess. It was set so that the ear and mouth pieces were pointed out into the room. The center of the handset was centered in the middle of the shelf. She looked it over, made one little adjustment that brought the set to the front edge of that shelf, then touched it to the left a smidge, and then stepped back.

“That’s how I remember leaving it,” she told the pair.

“Miss Hopps…” Kay started.

“Judy, please.”

“Very well, Judy, why did you leave it like that?” the diminutive vixen asked.

“With all the noise going on, I thought it might be a good idea to leave the line open so the mammals on the surface had at least a chance to hear anything else that might be useful,” the rabbit replied.

“Good choice,” Roy said. “Without that bit of data we’d be more in the dark than we are.”

“Why is it so important to know how I placed it?”

“We’ve analyzed that sound for all we could but there were some ambiguities, possible errors that were present because we didn’t know how that set was positioned. If you’d left it hanging by its cord below the recess it might have cocked to the right or the left. Set on top of the body box and the dynamics change. How far from the front edge of the recess can alter things. The further back, the narrower the zone of best hearing. Add to that that if it’s most to all of the way back there is a distortion problem from minute echoing going on inside of the recess,” Kay explained. “Knowing this removes a lot of the unknowns and possible errors so we can do a better job of getting more out of what we have.”

Kay looked at the mockup and then back to Judy.

“By the way, good choice on the positioning. You couldn’t have set it up any better,” she added.

“Thanks,” Judy said as she warmed a little at the compliment.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Medical section, the ‘Site’

“Who was here, I mean actually present in the room, when we came in with Miss Hopps?” Nick asked the head nurse.

“That would be Tina Snow, Robin Quinn, Alex Wood, Sabrina Goodwin, and myself,” the white-tailed deer doe said. “We had other team members on standby in case they were needed but none of them were called in.”

“Get them in here. I have some questions to ask all of you,” Nick said.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

“It’ll be a while before Nick gets back. Why don’t you join me in the breakroom?” Kay suggested.

Judy followed and found herself in a small room containing five round top tables with four chairs at each. Two walls were lined with vending machines that offered various bagged nibbles and a variety of drinks. The vending machines amazed Judy. There were ones in public, in her time, and in the complex but none of them came close to having the number of items on offer these had. Kay asked the rabbit what she wanted to eat and what kind of drink she desired. After getting their selections, doe and vixen seated themselves at the shortest table. Once again, Judy saw Kay giving her that odd, non-threatening, look.

“I’m sorry for staring,” Kay said, at last. “It’s just that, never in my wildest imaginings, did I think that I would meet the person most responsible for my being here.”

“How can I be that?” the mystified Judy asked.

“Well, back in my high school days I, like a lot of teens, was kind of thrashing around trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. My family had suggestions, most to do with finding a mate and starting up my own family.”

Judy gave out with a suppressed giggle.

“I take it that your family did something similar for you?”

“Since I was 12! I’m from a long established farming family and outside of growing produce, ‘growing’ a pack of kits comes in a very close second place.”

“Obviously, that didn’t happen. So, what got you into the sciences?”

“It wasn’t my first choice. When I was nine I let it be known that I was going to be a police mammal, and be of service in the great city of Zootopia. Make the world a little better day by day. A couple of times my parents tried to talk me out of it but I was determined. Then, in my freshman year in high school, I learned that there was no chance of my becoming a police mammal. Rabbits, and some other species, were actively barred from going into that line of work. Too small and too much chance of being seriously injured or killed versus the larger mammals. Then, add in that rabbits have a, justified to some degree, reputation of panicking when under real pressure…”

Judy sighed and shook her head once.

“I was devastated. And, like you, I was pretty…rudderless after that. Then, one of my teachers, Mr. Patterson, he taught math and science, suggested that if I wanted to make an impact that I pick a field of science and go into it. He pointed out that science affects everything in due time and, as such, it affects everyone.”

Judy took a sip of her fruit juice.

“So, I started going through any science books I could get hold of. As well as the books in the school library, Mr. Patterson lent me a batch that he had. He even signed me up for a dozen science newsletters. By the time I was 16 I’d decided to go for it. Thing was, there were so many branches and I was having trouble settling on anything in particular. Then, our school got a visit from Prof. Arnold Bronson. He was a physicist from the Los Animos laboratory in New Mexxally touring schools and giving talks on the need for scientists and the various occupations available. In his speech he mentioned something called ‘quantum mechanics’. He explained that, very basically, it was the science of the very small, that it endeavored to explain the behavior of matter and its interactions with energy on the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. And that it was, really, the ‘bedrock’, the basis from which, in his view, the physical universe operated from. ‘Make any discovery in this field and you literally effect everything else.’ he said.”

“And that decided you,” Kay said.

“It did. I talked with him afterwards and he advised me on courses to take and at what college. He became my long distance mentor during my college years. And was the reason I ended up doing work, with his team, out at the complex.”

Another sip.

“Enough of my history, how about continuing your story,” Judy said to Kay.

“Yes, that. Well, my grandfather sat me down one time and suggested that I look into work in the audio analysis field. He explained that it was wide open and that could take me pretty much anywhere and, once I got my experience in, that the pay was pretty good.”

“Was he a sound tech?” Judy asked.

“Oh, yes! Darned good one! At the time, he worked for a sound lab that did work for most of the police departments, plus the state cops, for the southern half of the state. He got me into the lab as a part timer and started my training.”

Judy saw the vixen’s eyes glaze over for a few seconds, then come back into focus.

“So many pieces of gear to learn and work with, so many ‘toys’ to mess with. And there were at least a dozen projects for development of new and better equipment going on all the time. I was hooked! Did my six years at college and was going to go back to the lab at home when granddad advised me to put in for a government job in the Department of Energy. Said it not only paid better but that they worked with, and on, more cutting edge equipment than the lab had. Received an acceptance and, after a series of security checks, I came here. And that’s when I learned two things. One, my granddad worked here for nearly 14 years. He was on the complex watch team.”

Kay gave Judy that look again and the bunny finally ‘read’ it; it was a look of wondering awe.

“The second thing was that two years before he left he got access to the original tape of your call to the surface that day, set up some gear he had tinkered together in a room with sound dampening walls, and then sat there listening to it. Not just your conversation, he let it run for minutes afterwards.”

Judy caught on.

“He heard the alien’s foot pads,” she said.

“Granddad played it back again and again for hours. Noting the pattern of the sounds, the point where it sounded strongest, where on the tape it faded in and where it faded out again. The report he turned in set off a heated debate as to what it could be. He pointed out that, as far as he could determine, the sound could not have been made by any mammal in the complex, even if they were on all fours. That it was, in his estimation, a single, but unknown, entity moving along the corridor. Later analysis backed him up on all of it.”

Kay took a sip from her own drink.

“It created quite a stir, after years and years of nothing new to report here was something new to work with. We’ve been refining it ever since,” she said.

She looked to Judy again.

“Miss Ho…Judy, you have to have wondered why it took so long for someone to come and pull you out of there.”

“I have but no one has told me, yet.”

“Then I will. Minutes after your call, they had a strike team of 46 troops assembled and they went down into the complex. They were never seen or heard from again. Three hours later, they had a bigger and more heavily armed force of 372 troops assembled. They were divided up into six groups of 62 as they were going to hit all six of the entrances at the same time. When the lead pairs got just inside, they screamed, threw away the weapons they carried, and ran away until they couldn’t run any more. They were utterly, completely terrified for reasons unknown. A second attempt was made with the same results. Later tests and experiments revealed that even if one was asleep or even under heavy sedation that it worked on them. They tried lead helmets, even a lead casing with two-foot-thick walls, no good. Even insects don’t go in. As best we can figure, someone, something set up some kind of…’energy’, for lack of a better term, field that effects the fear centers in the brain. Then, they tried to drill down to the first level.”

“And ran into that…barrier,” Judy said.

“They did,” Kay nodded. “They kept at it until they got almost 8000 feet from the complex and it wasn’t there anymore. Dug down a couple hundred feet and then tunneled sideways, ran into it again. For six years they tried every digging angle they could and just could not get past that barrier, as you call it. In the process, they found a second field of some type, this one knocked out anything electrically powered, even your basic battery powered flashlight. The hand cranked ones don’t work in it, either.”

Judy mauled things over for a time.

“If this fear field works so well, then how did Nick get in? And, for that matter, get me out without it working on me?” she asked.

Internally, the bunny felt a cold shudder run through her at the thought, the dream nightmare had been bad enough.

“Therein lies a mystery,” the vixen said. “Nick showed up months ago to take an onsite watchmammal job out there. Only one of the six entrances remains open and that one is under camouflage cover. They hire mammals to stand guard out there to see if they try to go in.”

“That’s…cruel!” Judy exclaimed.

“They are warned not to but it is pretty much inevitable that, given time, they will. The two who didn’t, after a year’s passage, were promoted and moved off to a better paying job. Nick didn’t last five weeks before he stuck his nose in. To everyone’s astonishment, nothing happened to him.”

Kay shook her head.

“He was in there for about 14 minutes before he came out again. Calm, cool, unafraid. Some of our team wanted to go get him right away but Bogo told everyone to wait. They gave that fox another briefing because they said the rules had changed some, and that, as long as he was careful, he could go into the entrance. A few days later, he did. And was in for almost 33 minutes that time. They drove him here to get some additional training and while he was gone they stuck in some insects in cages, hoping that fear field was gone. It wasn’t, the bugs went crazy just like they always had before. They waited for him to go in for a third time and when he did he was in for 51 minutes. Then, he surprised everyone by calling in to report that he had done so and noted that his flashlight, smartphone, and digital camera had all failed while inside but had come back online once outside again. That did it, he was hauled in, debriefed eight ways from Holy Day, and then made him a full member of our team. None of the higher ups, including Bogo, are happy with this as Nick tends to be something of a loose cannon. But, he’s the only one who, for some reason, is not bothered by the field. He says he knows something is there because it feels like there’s an ever so faint buzz in the back of his head. Over the months, he’s established that, by his ‘buzz’, the field stops after level 12. He hasn’t found an end to the power damping one, yet.”

“So, he explores the complex,” Judy said.

“That he does. They’ve given him non-electronic cameras that use hard copy film to get photos. He uses a flash powder gun that’s like the old flintlock pistols to get the needed light to get good images. Thus far, he’s explored 22 levels and was about 70% through number 23 when he turned you up.”

A long pull from her drink.

“As to how he got you up without being ‘feared out’, he had a big piece of that cocoon material that was large enough to wrap around your head and, somehow, it shielded you from it. There was real hope that it could be used to get others past the field but the deterioration of it has put us back to square one on that account.”

“How are you two doing?”

The fems looked up to see Nick leaning against one side of the doorway.

“Exchanging our sordid past histories and bringing Judy up to speed on your little special ability,” Kay said.

“Oh dear, I been ratted out!” Nick said in mock distress as he approached their table.

“That you have, scoundrel!”

Kay looked to Judy, then back to the fox.

“You treat her good, Nick. For all she’s been through she’s handling all of it pretty darned good.”

“Trust me, Kay. You don’t know even the half of it where she’s concerned,” he said as he assisted Judy to her feet. “As to treating her good, why would I do otherwise?”

He gave Judy a wink along with a devilish grin.

“After all, I am the gallant knight who rescued this fair damsel.”

“I’ll believe the ‘knight’ part when I see your polished armor and the great steed to ride on,” snarked the fennec.

Chapter Text

Chapter 7: Hearing Issues and Other Things

Allen William Bogo was feeling upbeat. For 11 years he had battled to keep the budget for his section from being pared back more. After all, the “Complex Overwatch” team hadn’t made any breakthroughs since the sound discovery in 1983. True, they had worked to refine and enhance that item and then given it to a science team to try to work out what might have made it, but that was all. He was really feeling like the lone soldier defending a bridge from a swarm of attackers when he caught a break. It was in the form of a smart-aleck vulpine that, if not for his uniqueness, wouldn’t have had any chance to be considered, let alone selected, for the team.

“Nicholas Piberius Wilde (nicknames: Slick, Sly, Vulpine Phantom): red fox, 30 years old, born and raised in Zootopia. Small time hustler from age 12, departed Zootopia seeking ‘adventure’ in the great wide world at age 16. Ship’s crew mammal for a few years and is thought to have done some smuggling during that time. Disappeared for almost two years then turned up with three mammals who had been kidnapped and held for ransom. The grateful families rewarded him and he disappeared again for several months. Turned up working for a mercenary group as a scout. Once rescued an injured squad mate while under fire. Not known to have killed anyone during his time with them. Rumored to have returned to smuggling, small stuff that was more of an annoyance to the involved authorities rather than a big danger like drugs or weapons. Not known for any mammal trafficking. Another kidnapping rescue with three more to follow over the course of a year. Drops off the ‘radar’ again and then, ten months ago, shows up in New Mexxally to apply for watch mammal job at complex site.

Unique ability; unaffected by fear field that ‘guards’ the complex.

Brought onto team eight months ago. Starts exploring the complex, taking photos as he goes, over the last seven months. Completed explorations of levels one through twenty-two. While those explorations fail to turn up anything significant (other than no bodies or any sign of damage), to date, progress is being shown and there is a small increase in the next budget. Then, on level 23, Wilde makes the first real discovery/breakthrough in the form of Judith L. Hopps encased in some kind of cocoon that holds her in biological stasis for 61 years. Breaks her loose from her prison and manages to get her, in a sane state, to the surface.

That “breakthrough” and the information gleaned from Miss Hopps as a result, was a major reason that Bogo was in good feeling mode. And things got better when, this morning, he received a report that his request for additional funds for the science team who worked up the robot model, whose movements over the floor duplicated the sound on a security tape, were approved. Due to the changes that their new data demanded, the team had requested more funding so they could construct at least three new robots plus for the mods to try on their original model. On top of that, he received other funds to work with. One item in particular had to be, in his view, dealt with and, outside of the science team’s work, it was the most expensive one.

“I’m amazed that they didn’t bulk in the least about it,” he thought. “Damned ‘bean counters’ want to argue over anything and everything these days.”

The intercom cheeped.

“Yes, Miss Howlverson?”

“Doctor Hannover is here, Chief. He says he has something he’d like to discuss with you.”

Bogo knew he didn’t have any appointments for the next couple of hours…

“Send him in, then,” he replied.

One Leonardo Gaines Hannover, a male timber wolf in his early 30s, entered. In one paw, he held a large computer tablet.

“Have a seat, doctor,” the Chief said, indicating a chair by his desk.

The big buffalo waited until he was settled in his seat, then…

“Now, what does our site audiologist want to bring to my attention?” Bogo asked.

“Two hours ago, I completed some hearing tests on Miss Judith Hopps. I think you should see the results,” the lupine said.

After setting up his tablet, the doctor brought up a screen that showed seven traces, left to right, on it. Except for some pretty minor variances, they were all the same.

“I cobbled these up from Miss Hopps’s medical records. They show that her hearing, for a rabbit, is in the excellent range.”

Bogo nodded.

A couple of taps on the screen and a new trace appeared. The image was enlarged and that’s when Bogo saw that it wasn’t just one trace, that there were four of them. And the variances in them were less than in the previous ones.

“I had her do the test four times. Now, let me merge the charts.”

He did, and the new traces were more than an inch higher over the old ones.

“Her hearing ability has gone up an amazing, even phenomenal, amount.”

“Looks impressive. How far into the upper range for her species is she?” the Chief asked.

“Sir, that isn’t the range for rabbits, she’s off the scale there. This is the range, the upper range, for bat eared foxes and fennecs,” said the wolf.

Bogo remained silent for a time, processing the data.

“Anything you know that can account for that big of a jump in her hearing ability?” he finally asked.

“In very rare cases, accident or a serious bout with a disease has magnified someone’s hearing. But, as far as we can tell, Miss Hopps has not encountered any such event.”

“Except for her time in that cocoon,” Bogo thought.

“She’s agreed to come back in a week and retake the tests but, I have a feel that they will end up with the same results,” Hannover said.

“Hmmmm, go ahead and write up a report on this but keep it on file for the time being.”

“Yes, sir.

Bogo sensed the wolf’s hesitation.

“Anything else?” Bogo prompted.

“Sir, they are doing a DNA evaluation on Miss Hopps, aren’t they?”

“We obtained blood, saliva, and fur samples when she was brought in from the complex. They were sent out to several labs with the directive to do as accurate a mapping of her genome as possible. Why do you ask?”

“Sir, wolves have pretty good noses for scents.”

Nod of acknowledgement.

“My family has lived in the Tri-Burrows area for a number of generations. Not in Bunnyburrow, where Miss Hopps is from, but I was born and raised in that area. As such I have smelled Maker only knows how many bunnies. So I have their scent pattern locked down, if you will.”

Another nod.

“Sir, there is something different about Hopps’s scent. It’s not bad, jarring, or unpleasant, just…different from any other bunny scent I know of.”

Pause.

“Anything else?” the Chief asked.

“Just one more thing, has Wilde brought up her scent difference to you?”

Head shake.

“Odd, his nose is about as good as mine so I’d have thought he would have noticed it.’

“Hmmmmmmm, he hasn’t had your…intimacy with rabbit scents so he may not have noticed or thought it was odd in any way,” Bogo speculated.

“That’s likely,” Leonardo agreed.

“Doctor, add this observation of yours to your report.”

“Yes sir.”

“Anything else?”

“No sir, that’s all, for now.”

And with that, the wolf picked up his tablet and departed.

Bogo mulled all of this over in his head for several minutes, then, on his screen, brought up an image of Judy that had been taken a few days after she was brought in from the complex. In it, she lay, asleep, on one side with the blanket pulled up to her neck. The expression on her face was peaceful…serene.

“What has that damned thing done to you, Judith?” he asked aloud to himself.

Chapter Text

Chapter 8: Headache

“Don’t knock! Just come…oww…in!”

“Wow! That’s snappish!” Nick thought as he turned the doorknob then entered.

The living room curtains were all pulled shut and no lights were on. With the door closed behind him, Nick’s night vision adjusted to the darkness with its customary swiftness. They pick out Judy’s form lying at one end of one of the sofas and he could make out a compress of some type covering her face from below her eyes to above her forehead, and that she held another in one hand.

“Fluff, did you hit your head?” he said in concern as he approached her.

“Ohhhh, if only I could claim that I suffered from a kinetic energy impact injury,” she groaned.

Nick had to think on that for a couple of seconds.

“We call that ‘blunt force trauma’ these days,” he said.

“Mmmm, my definition is more scientifically accurate,” was her reply.

“If you didn’t crack your noggin on something, then what’s with the headache?”

She extended an arm outwards and then waved a paw. He followed the direction indicated to see the table with a desktop computer there. Having brought it in and setting it up a week ago, the fox commenced teaching her how to use it. She was a quick study (though he still got a mental snicker out of her initial difficulties in using the ‘mouse’) and was comfortable with the use of it in little time. He set up a batch of icons on the ‘desktop’ that linked to various news, entertainment, and science sites so she could quick access them, then taught her how to use the “search” feature to find what she wanted.

“Or, at least, get you in the ‘ballpark’,” he’d told her.

He looked back to Judy.

“The comp. was giving you problems? You should have called me and I’d have come to….”

“That…contraption works just fine,” she interrupted. “All too well, in fact.”

Now, he was puzzled.

“Ooooookay, let’s take this from the top. What happened?” Nick asked.

“Sigh. Early, very early, this morning I decided that it was time that I work at getting myself up to speed on the advancements in my field of study that have happened since my…’sleep time’,” Judy said. “So, I sat down, turned on that devil’s device, called up one of the sites with all of those science videos, and began my studies.”

Quiet.

“And how long were you at it?”

It was past 4:00 PM.

“Ten hours and 43 minutes.”

Silence.

“You did almost 11 hours of cramming a veritable supernova of quantum physics advancements into your head? Fur and fluff, no wonder your head is hurting!” he said.

He managed to suppress a chuff of mirth, hoping that she didn’t hear it. He should have known better.

“Yes, laugh at my pain, you vulpine sadist. The day will come when I shall take my just and righteous vengeance upon thee for this!” Judy said.

“Jude….”

“Whaaap!”

The damp towel actually wrapped completely around his head!

“Only my dad, fox boy!!” he heard her declare, then groan.

“Great Evolution! I didn’t even see her move!” he thought as he got the towel off.

“Alright, Fluff. Now, having had this wonderfully delightful experience, I take it that you’ll do your studies in much shorter, more ‘digestible’ lengths?” Nick said.

“That I will, that I will,” Judy replied.

In the following few minutes of quiet, Nick cranked up the desktop and checked it out, just in case.

“Nick.”

“Yes?”

“It’s time I visited Bunnyburrow…time I saw home,” Judy said.

He’d known that was coming, but….

“Judy, it’s been six decades…” he began.

“I know. ‘Time marches inexorably onwards, uncaring of mortals wishes or desires’. Dad and mom are dead and gone, so are who knows how many of my sibs, relatives…friends…”

She was silent for nearly a minute.

“But I still need to see it myself,” she said at last.

“Okay, I’ll make the arrangements,” Nick said as he got up.

He took another look at the languishing bunny, her face still covered with that cool wet cloth…and that’s when it hit him.

“She couldn’t see me but was dead on accurate with her throw!” he marveled.

Chapter Text

Chapter 9: BUSTED, Sorta’

Eyes closed, Judy took in the sounds that came in from all around her. The calls, laughing, and squealing of excited and happy kits, occasional admonishments from parents to behave (mostly ignored), the noises made by various country carnival games and rides. All of it punctuated now and then with an announcement of this or that activity being made over the ‘grounds’ speaker network. The gentle breeze wafted the aromas of all kinds of baked and cooked foods into her twitching seeking nose.

“Maker! It’s like I never left home!” she thought in wonder.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The drive to the Tri-Burrows took eight days. They could have done it in three, but Nick insisted on making stops at Las Vegas (for two days and nights) and at three national parks to take drive through tours of. It was the first time she’d been to any of those places and she delighted at seeing them. And, for her, the start of their trip had a surprise of its own.

The scenery outside of the medium sized RV had not changed much in the first hundred miles of the trip. That was fine, as Judy found herself turning over in her head a conversation she had had just before they got started.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Kay Dillon looked up just in time to see Judy walk into the main lab room. The fennec vixen was applying new data gained to do a rework of the sound recording of whatever had passed phone station 2309 over six decades ago. New data provided by the very rabbit woman coming towards her. Slipping off her oversized headset, Kay put it aside and got to her feet as Judy approached.

“I thought you were taking off on a vacation tour,” she said.

“We will be in about another hour,” Judy replied.

“So, what can I do for you?” asked the fennec.

“Kay, I did a short study on the microphones and speakers in telephone handsets and have a question to ask you,” Judy said.

“Ask away, I’m all ears,” Kay answered

“That’s supposed to be a bunny pun!” Judy said, with a pained expression on her face.

“When rabbits can seriously compete with we fennecs in our audio hearing range they can make claim to that one.”

“Careful what you wish for, Kay,” Judith thought.

“Now, your phone handset question,” Kay said.

“Yes. What I want to know is how you managed to overcome the single source problem. How, with just that one mouthpiece microphone, you’ve managed to figure out the direction of travel of the alien.”

The questioning look on Kay’s face puzzled Judy.

“You mean, they never told you?”

“Well, if they had I wouldn’t be asking the question.”

“That’s not…”

Kay stopped.

“Let’s go to the breakroom and sit for a bit,” she suggested.

After getting a couple of fruit juices from the vending machines, they settled at the table they had sat at during Judy’s last visit.

“Judy, do you know the difference between speakers and microphones?”

“One converts the waves of a caller’s voice into electrical waves or pulses and the other reconverts those waves or pulses back into audio sound waves,” the doe explained.

“Correct. Now, do you know what the real physical difference between the two of them is?”

Judy shook her head.

"None. Most every speaker makes a great microphone. All that is needed is to tap the speaker leads off to another microphone amp, then send the signal back separately.”

A confused look crosses Judy’s face.

“Why do that?”

“Judy, your era is notable for several things; two of those are, 1) a tremendous growth in scientific research and development and, 2) paranoia. The atomic bomb secrets were compromised as were who knows how many other things the military and national government were trying to keep from being secured by the Rus and other questionable to downright unfriendly governments. Up until the advent of the cell phone, and even after that, the way a mammal kept someone on the other end from hearing them talking to someone else in their physical presence or on another phone was to cover the mouth piece with their hand or press it against their body. In most cases, the earphone part was left uncovered. And, if wired right, anything said would be picked up by it and sent out.”

Kay saw the look of dawning realization on Judith’s face.

“And, most, if not all, of the phones in the complex were set up that way,” Judy murmured aloud to herself.

Kay nodded.

“So, you did have two sound pickups.”

“Their centers almost exactly seven point five inches apart and each curved at the same but opposing angles,” the vixen said. “And, as I said before, you literally could not have placed that handset in a better position.”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

They pulled off of the road into the lot of what Nick called a ‘truck stop’. After gassing up, Nick parked in front of the main building and escorted Judy inside. She was close to being awed, compared to the road side service stations of her own time this place was downright huge! And while those stations of old might have offered some cold drinks and, maybe, a few bagged snacks for sale, what was in this place could easily have fed her whole family of 89 for at least a week, more likely two. And that wasn’t all, there were mindboggling numbers of other items for sale, most of which she had no idea what they were for. Having picked out several snacks she wanted to try, Judy had started for the cash register desk when she pulled up short so fast that Nick almost tripped over her.

“Nick, I haven’t got any money to pay for this!” she said.

“No problem, I’ll cover it,” he replied.

“That’s kind but I should be doing that, not you.”

“Well, let me take care of it this one time,” he said as he took the items from her hands and set them on the counter.

The process of checking out was far different from her past experiences, no punching on cash register keys and hearing that ‘ching!” sound when it rang up. Instead, the cashier swept each item over a section of glass set in the counter, there was a “beep” sound, and the item amount (shockingly expensive, in her eyes), along with a total, appeared on a display that she could read. Less than a minute later, it was all done. Nick swiped a card through a slot in the side of a small box, tapped a few keys on the keypad, and then he picked up their purchases, in two small nonpaper bags, one for her items and the other for his, and they headed for the doors.

“Here you are, Fluff,” Nick said, handing over the bag with her items.

They climbed into the RV and, once in the driver’s seat, Nick pulled out one of his snacks, opened it, and began chewing on it. Judy selected a bag of alfalfa/clover sticks, opened it and pulled one out to gnaw on.

“I have to talk to Bogo about getting paid. With all that….”

“Already set up, Fluff. Ole Buffalo Cheeks is thick headed on some things but payroll is not one of them. You’ve been on salary since I brought you up from the complex.”

Reaching inside of his vest, Nick pulled out an envelope and handed it to Judy. She opened it up and extracted the contents; a batch of $20 bills ($600.00 worth) and three plastic cards. She picked one up to look it over.

“That is the debit card to your account. The pin number, a security number, is written on a piece of tape on the back. Let me know if you want to change it and I’ll walk you through how to do that.”

He explained to her how to use the card and said that on their next stop he’d show her how to use it to get cash out of an ATM. The other two cards, he explained, were loadable gift cards, each with $800.00 on it, that were good for any purchase up to that amount. Again, he promised to guide her through the procedure to get more money on them.

“I need to know how much is in the account,” she said.

Nick produced another envelope and handed it to her. Judy opened it and pulled out the single page within, unfolded it, and read it. Nick grinned at the growing look of confusion on her face.

“This…this can’t be right!” she exclaimed.

“Oh, why not?” he asked as he strapped on his six-point safety harness.

“It’s too much! I’ve only been back seven weeks! How can I have earned $147,623.00 in that time?!”

Firing up the engine, Nick got back out on the road.

“There’s no mistake, Miss Rip Van Winkle. And that’s not any ways near all of it.”

“Huh?”

“As you haven’t actually been dead all of those years and were on…in a government facility still owned by said government, Bogo arranged to have you back paid for all of those 61 years that you were in ‘time out’ mode. The Chief didn’t give me an exact dollar figure, but the amount, in a series of other accounts they’ve set up for you, including bonuses for all of the new information you’ve provided, comes to over six million dollars, and that is after taxes.”

Judith remained in stunned silence for many a mile.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Their stop in Vegas came close to being a full sensory overload for Judy. Colorful and, literally, flashy facades and display signs declared the names of the hotel/casinos along the main roads through the city (not to mention those, usually smaller, ones on the outskirts).

“In 1958, there were five hotel/casino complexes in Vegas,” Nick told her. “Today, there are 106 with several more under construction, and more in the planning and licensing stage.”

Their reservations, two adjacent rooms, were at the “Excalibur”, a “Legends of King Arthur” themed place. Once in their rooms, fox and rabbit napped until the evening then dressed semi-formal and went out to tour the ‘Strip’. If Judy thought those light displays in daytime were something, they completely paled in colorful brilliance to what they were at night! Add in shooting fountain displays where water, for all intents and purposes, ‘danced’ around in them and, in some, shot 100+ feet into the air. Nick wore his sunglasses and when he saw Judy rubbing her eyes he produced a pair from a pocket and handed them to her.

“Thanks,” she said after slipping them on. “Never thought I would see the time I would need to wear these during the night.”

“Bad as it is for you, think of what it’s like for us nocturnal types,” he said.

Judy was glad for her fox’s presence. She’d be utterly lost in this place without him. Over the time they spent in “Sin City” the pair took in a couple of Broadway shows playing there, toured some of the local sightseeing spots, and ‘contributed’ at least several hundreds of dollars to the local economy through slot machines, blackjack playing, and some time spent at a Craps table.

“Whew, what would mom think of me if she could see me now,” Judy thought as she readied to launch the pair of dice in her paw once again.

The trip tours through the parklands were much more sedate and a lot less costly than their time in Vegas. To Judy’s surprise, they were not staying at a hotel in Bunnyburrow. Instead, Nick had rented a house at the edge of town. After putting away their clothing and other items in their respective rooms, the pair took a stroll into town. Not surprisingly, the place had changed some over the decades. New houses, many with underlying burrows, lined the edge of town. While rabbits and hares were still predominating, there was a noticeable growth in the populations of non-lapin species. Trees she remembered, and had climbed, were taller and though most of the streets were still there, they had undergone changes, mainly to do with widening them. When they got to the opposite side of the burrow Judy saw activity going on there.

“Oh, I forgot, it’s time for the midsummer harvest festival,” she recalled.

“Yes, it starts tomorrow and goes for two weeks,” Nick responded.

Judy looked to him.

“You made those side trips so that we’d arrive just in time for it,” she concluded.

“Fox stands guilty as charged!” Nick said. “So, file away that quantum mind part of yourself and be just a farm girl having a good time.”

Back at the house, Judith had some trouble getting to sleep. The anticipation of tomorrow had her as excited as when she was a kit. The day did not disappoint, the weather was good and stayed that way well into the night. Wearing a checkered dark pink colored long sleeved shirt, a pair of comfortable jeans, and broad brimmed woven straw hat, she wondered around the festival, letting her senses take in all of it.

“Sixty years have passed but this, this is still the same,” she thought.

Even the sales of tickets and items were done the ways she had known from so long ago; cash traded hands and was put into a box or, amazingly, even an old vintage, for these days, analog cash register here and there. However, the modern day still intruded, in the way of the pervasive presence of those smartphones and the occasional electronic tablet. Nick was with her, of course; her ever present guardian whose company garnered a lot of questioning to puzzled looks from those around them. The fox turned his paw to several carnival skill games, won some prizes, and handed them over to her.

“Prizes for the violet eyed bunny,” he said with a grin that caused her ears to heat and redden.

They were exiting one of the carnival rides when Judy spotted someone and stopped in her tracks.

“It can’t be,” she said.

“What?” questioned Nick as he followed the direction she looked.

His eyes picked out the one mammal that stood out. That was because of her fleece. Instead of the usual cream to almost white colorings….

“Black as the inside of an unlighted coal mine at midnight, as they say,” Nick thought.

He put the ewe’s age around 16 to 18 and she wore a short sleeved shirt that sported alternating white and dark pink horizontal stripes and a pair of magenta colored cargo shorts. Judy snagged his paw.

“Come on, Nick!” she said as the bunny pulled him towards the sheep.

“Miss, miss!” Judy called as they approached.

The ewe looked at Judy with a curious expression on her face.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry to intrude but, would you tell me your name?” Judy asked.

“I’m Sheela Woolverson,” came the answer.

The bunny paused for a few heartbeats.

“You wouldn’t happen to know of a Sharla Gibson, would you?” she asked.

“Yes, she is my great-great-grandmother.”

Judy’s ears perked up as she noted the present tense, and was about to ask another question when a fast approaching sound claimed her attention. She barely got turned around towards it when a pair of starving anacondas wrapped around her and she found herself hugged crushingly hard against someone.

“Judy!! It’s you! Your alive! Ohhhh, they told us you died but I never really believed it! And here you are!” a voice that was so joyful that its sound made the bunny forget that she couldn’t breathe.

“Ahem, madam, would you please loosen your hold on my colleague so that she may breathe properly,” intruded Nick’s voice.

That hold loosened and, next, Judy found herself held at arm’s length. She raised her eyes to see who it was. The sight that greeted her stirred astonishment within her. Never in her remembered life had she seen a sheep face that was as aged as this one. More crow’s-feet wrinkles than she thought were possible dominated the corners of the eyes, eyes that….

“Wh…who are y…you?” Judith stammered out.

There was just a second of confusion in the elderly ewe’s face, then…

“Judy, it’s me, Sharla,” came the answer.

All of a sudden, Judy knew the real meaning of the term “poleaxed”. Her mind just locked up, unable, at this time, to take in that revelation.

“Miss Sharla, I’m Nicholas Wilde, and my friend does go by the name of Judy, full name Judith Leslie Hobson,” Nick said.

The fox’s voice jarred Judy out of her paralysis and she looked in his direction as she was set on her feet on the ground.

“Driver’s license,” she saw him mouth.

With trembling fingers, she dug her billfold out of her back pocket, opened it up, and pulled out her license. Wanting to keep her initials, and first name, they had settled on this one as her public identity.

“Here,” she said as she handed the card to Sharla.

While the New Mexxally license ‘said’ that it had been issued seven months ago, it, and the picture of her on it, were barely two weeks old. The date of birth read “7 March, 1993”.

“Have to admit that it would be interesting to see the look on some cop’s face if your original date of birth was on it,” she remembered Nick saying in amusement when he had handed it to her.

Sharla scrutinized the license, looked to Judy, then back to the card.

“Sharp old bird, maybe too sharp,” Nick thought.

As Sharla did her examination, Judy looked her once best friend over. The fleece not covered by the short sleeved blouse and her just about the knees length skirt showed not one bit of the black from long ago. Instead, just about all of it looked like spun silver with a slight darkening towards gray in a few small areas.

“My apologies,” the elder ewe said, at last, as she handed the card back to Judy. “But, you are the very image, a veritable clone, of my friend when she was your age.”

“No apologies needed, you just startled me…” Judy began.

“Nana Sharla, you dropped your canes,” Sheela interrupted as she handed them over.

Taking one in each hand, the elderly sheep looked back at the bunny and the fox who, now, stood close behind and a little to one side of the rabbit doe.

“You two enjoy the festival,” she said, then shambled away.

Judy didn’t know what to think. After all these years, her best friend still lived. That was something of a major miracle in its own right. But to see her so aged…

“Miss Hobson.”

Tearing her eyes from the receding elder, Judy looked to Sheela.

“Do you happen to be an astronomer?” she asked.

“No, I’m afraid not.”

Sheela nodded and then headed off to follow Sharla. Judy’s mind worked furiously; for Maker’s sake, to find her best friend still alive. She wanted more than a “ships passing in the night” contact with her, at least a little more.

“I’ve got to find out more about her life. Find out what she’s done since I’ve been gone. But how without making folks here….”

Her ears perked up.

“Nick, does that smartphone of yours work here?”

“Oh yeah. The whole area is wired with wi-fi and the signals are five bar,” he said.

“Okay, let’s find an unoccupied table. I want to see if this Net has information I want.”

"On what?”

“Not what, who,” she said as she headed off.

“As in ‘Who’s on firs…”

WHOA!! Who knew a bunny could growl like a hacked off wolf?!

“That’s her,” Judy said when Nick brought up the file.

The picture attached to the file was taken a few years after Judy last saw her. It was accompanied by another one showing a cream fleeced ram.

“That’s Roy Woolverson, Sharla was sweet on him in college,” Judy said.

“Well, they were more than sweet on each other. ‘Married in September of 1959. Five kids, three rams and two ewes. Extensive works in fields of astronomy and astrophysics’,” Nick read aloud.

He scrolled downwards and something caught his eye.

“Judy, look at this."

She scooted closer in order to see the screen better.

“’In 1983, the team of Sharla Gibson and Roy Woolverson published a paper that suggested that by taking into account the new inflation theory and some new red shift data that it was theoretically possible that there were objects, such as galaxies, and even whole clusters of them, that were not only traveling at the speed of light, but, in some cases, anywhere up to as much as 54 to 57 percent beyond the speed of light. While no one was able to find fault with the data and calculations made, most of the astronomical community dismissed the findings as “impossible”’.”

A claw tip scrolled down more to stop at another section.

“’After extensive and exhaustive evaluation of the 1995 Humble space telescope long exposure photo of a supposedly utterly empty area of space had, instead, a minimum of 2,500 galaxies in the view, the measurements revealed something utterly astonishing. Most of these objects were traveling at tremendous speeds; at least 70% of the speed of light. Further evaluation over the years showed something even more incredible, that almost a third of the objects were, indeed, moving at or above the speed of light! Some at the 50+ percent speeds as suggested in the original Gibson/Woolverson paper of 1983! These findings, checked and rechecked, have forced virtually all fields of physics and space sciences to rethink every law and theory based on the speed of light being the ultimate ‘speed limit’.”

“Wow, bet a lot of Sharla and Roy’s detractors ended up consuming vast amounts of crow after that!” Judy said.

“Well, Sharla may have served said bird up to them but not her mate.”

“Huh?”

Nick pointed to a single line in the file.

“In March of 1991, Roy Woolverson lost his battle with liver cancer and died.”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Sheela Woolverson answered the knock at the front door and found Judy and Nick standing outside.

“Would it be alright if we visited with Sharla?” the doe asked.

“Oh Maker, what am I DOING?!” she thought as she awaited an answer. “What can I say that won’t give things away? That would make the remotest sense while keeping what’s happened to me secret?”

She had not the slightest idea, all she knew was, against Nick’s advice, she had to see her old friend again.

“Sheela, who’s that at the door?” called a voice from within the house.

“It’s the bunny and fox we met at the festival, grandma.”

“Bring them in,” the voice said, after a second’s pause.

“Grandmother! We don’t….”

“I said…bring…them…in!”

“Now that’s the Sharla I know!” Judy thought as she followed the younger ewe into the house.

The silver fleeced elder sat in a comfortably padded chair in the large living room. She wore a pink colored long sleeved blouse and a light blanket covered her legs. The ewe’s eyes locked onto Judy and Nick the instant they entered the room and Judy got that “they are seeing more than just the surface” feeling.

“Please, be seated,” Sharla said, indicating the chairs on either side of her.

Judy took the one at her left side. Nick positioned himself where he stood behind and a little to one side of where Judy sat. Sharla’s eyes missed none of it.

“Sheela, go to the festival and enjoy yourself,” she said.

“Granma! We…you don’t know these mammals. It’s not safe….”

The young ewe halted at the look of steel her elder gave her.

“Sheela, for reasons you won’t understand, I am safer with these two than I would be with most of the residents of Bunnyburrow, and even some members of my own family. Now, skedaddle!”

Defeated, she left. Sharla returned her attention to her guests. Judy first, then her eyes shifted to the standing Nick.

“Mr. Wilde, do you ever relax from your guardianship of Judith?” she asked.

All she got in answer was a soft smile. Judy saw those turquoise blue eyes come back to her. Eyes that were as sharp and clear as they had been more than six decades ago. Eyes that looked deep, and missed nothing.

“I don’t know how it’s happened but you are Judith Lavern Hopps, my closest friend,” she said at last.

“Miss….” the doe started.

“Judy, stop. While I have rather enjoyed your tale of how you are not who you are, there is one thing that you have over looked, the one thing that proclaims who you really are,” Sharla said.

“Wh…what’s that?”

Those blue eyes shifted just a little to one side.

“Gideon’s claw marks,” the ewe answered.

Without thinking, Judy brought her left hand up to a place on her left cheek. Beneath the fur she could just feel the old scar marks forever branded there.

“While the white marks of the fur covering them have pretty much faded away, I can see them as clearly as when they were new.”

The ensuing silence was decidedly deafening.

“Busted,” Judy heard Nick say only loud enough for her amped up ears to hear.

Sheela Woolverson was not happy. Though ordered by her great-great-grandmother to leave the house and her with the unknown bunny and fox still there, it wasn’t setting well with the 17-year-old ewe. As such, enjoying the festival was something difficult for her to do. More and more fears were playing about in her mind. The only thing preventing her from outright returning was nana Sharla’s well-deserved reputation for verbally stripping fleece, fur, hide, and pelt off of those who displeased her. Still, she could sneak back and check on things on the sly. Upon arriving back at the house, Sheela was about to slip around to one of the living room’s side windows to peep in when the front door opened and out came Sharla and the bunny. Both laughed at something the bunny said and that’s when the fox appeared. He leaned against one side of the doorframe and the teenaged ewe could see the indulgent smile on the vulpine’s face as he watched the two fems go on chatting and giggling. Then, Sheela saw something else, something she hadn’t seen in years; nana Sharla wasn’t using a cane or her walker to help her stand. She stood there, shaking with mirth at something the fox said, as straight backed and steady as if she were years, many years, younger. Sheela shook her head in mystified wonder and went back to the festival.

Epilogue:

Sheela wondered just what she may have gotten herself into. She rode in the front “shotgun” seat of the RV that Nick, the red fox, and Judy, the rabbit, traveled in. Behind her and Nick, seated and strapped into a pair of captain’s chairs, were her great-great-grandmother, Sharla, and the afore mentioned bunny. Both were chatting quietly.

“Maker, I don’t think they’ve stopped, except to sleep and eat, since the first visit to the house!” the 17-year-old ewe thought.

That was eight days ago.

“You’d think they were old long lost friends rather than mammals with some matching interests...and a president for horrid jokes and puns.”

Not that Mr. Wilde was any slouch at either of the last two, she had come to know. If anything, he could outdo both the elder sheep and his rabbit companion, combined, paws down. In those ensuing days, Sheela lost count of how many curious residents of the Burrow asked her who the mystery pair were.

“They are from New Mexxally and they are on vacation. They’re here so they can see pretty much nothing but green all around versus scrub brush brown. After doing some image research of New Mexxally, I can understand their desire,” she’d told many a questioner.

More than a few had inquired on the question as to whether the vulpine and bunny might be/were lovers.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” she’d say. “And before you ask, I don’t think they are.”

“At present,” she would mentally add.

Though still young, Sheela sensed that there was something about those two that ‘said’ that they belonged together. She’d said so, once, to Sharla.

“My dear, you show a shrewdness beyond your years in that…’seeing’ of those two,” the elder ewe said in response.

Then, she saw the strangest of expressions cross her long lived elder’s face.

“And I hope to live to see the day when they will well and truly rattle this world to its core.”

The day before the Summer Festival was to end, Nick told Sheela that he was going to take Judy and Sharla out in the countryside for a surprise he had put together for them.

“I know you still have a few reservations about us so I’m asking that you accompany us as assistant and chaperon,” he told her. “Also, I think you’ll enjoy what it is, as well.”

He was correct in his view of her family having concerns. Hers had mostly faded by now and his invite to her made what was left trickle away some more.

“I’ll be happy to come along,” she accepted.

It was close to 10:00 PM. A waxing quarter moon hung above the horizon and every star in the cloudless night sky shown sharp and clear. Sheela was familiar with the territory they moved through. It was part of a nature preserve that was a mix of forests, clearings, hills, and low mountains. She was surprised when the night guard at the gate they stop at passes them on through after seeing Nick’s ID. The place was closed to the public after 6:00 PM. They drove a couple of more miles towards those mountains and then Nick stopped the vehicle and put it in park.

“Okay Ladies, time for fox of mystery to be properly mysterious,” he said as he rummaged through a bag set between his and Sheela’s seats.

From it, he pulled a pair of silk sleeping masks and then handed one to Sharla and the other one to Judy.

“For the next couple of hours, your main sense will be your hearing.”

Sheep and bunny looked over their respective masks, each sized for them.

“Is he this enigmatic often?” Sharla inquired as she slipped hers on.

“So far, this is his first time,” Judy replied as she donned her own mask.

Both masks cover their wearer from below their eyes to the upper part of their foreheads. Nick put the RV back in gear and headed down the road. He made a left turn a moment later, drove about another mile, then stopped and shut off the engine.

“We’re here,” he announced as he bailed out of the door.

“Here” was a place that Sheela recognized as she and others had been in attendance to a once a year event held at this location. Opening the side entrance door, Nick and Sheela carefully guided their respective charges out of the RV, then Nick, his hand holding one of Judy’s, led the way. Some hundred odd fox paces later, he stopped and set Judy down on a surprisingly comfortable lounge chair whose back was set at a 55 (+ or –) degree angle. Sheela got Sharla settled on a similarly comfortable lounge chair of her own, its back set at the same angle as Judy’s. There was, perhaps, about a foot of space between the two.

“Relax, my Ladies, and enjoy,” he said, softly.

With that, he flagged the one other mammal present. The badger, the fur on the right and left sides of his head trimmed almost down to the hide beneath, nodded and began his “magic”. A long low sounding tone emitted from the speakers. Even in the dim lighting, Sheela recognized the badger, he was Cordell Madis, one of the best synthesizer musicians in the country. His equipment was set up in a natural rock amphitheater and those lounge chairs were laid out in the best position for the coming music to be most effective.

“Nick is so right, there is no way I would want to miss this!” the teen ewe thought as the long low mysterious sounding music wave rolled lazily over them.

Nick stepped behind the black woolen teen, she had positioned herself behind and between the two chairs.

“Close your eyes, Sheela. Listen and feel. Ride the music so it takes you places you have barely dreamed of,” she heard him say.

She closed her eyes, and abandon all thought.

That wave repeated and an oddly sounding echo accompanied it. Slowly, ever so slowly, the repeating wave had other notes and tones added to it. As it went on, it seemed to Sheela that, in its beginning, it ‘spoke’ of a world coming to a slow and gentle end. Then, it gradually picked up in pace, telling the listeners of a new world coming.

“Things end, things begin.” was the quote that slipped through the teenage ewe’s mind as the music went on.

“By all the Great Makers deeds!” Sharla whispered to herself at the sensations that rolled through her.

She felt a hand take her own and was happy for the contact with the life friend she knew so well. The one who, long thought dead, had somehow returned into her life when she needed her the most.

The one badger concert went on, it’s music promising intriguing mysteries, astonishing wonders, and great deeds to be done for those with the courage and desire to see and grasp them.

Chapter Text

Fox Out of Place, Rabbit Out of Time

Chapter 10: “Today, Today is a Verrry Different Day”

“Oh Great Buffaloed One, trip plans going so well extending for three more weeks. Complex discovery has made unexpected link with long time star gazer. Two working at solving mysteries and riddles of the Universe (suggest NO bets on them not doing so). Taking J to big Z someday soon (if can pry that one from the other for a while) for some additional acclimatizing. Twisted horn meet before return to clear up some air. Prep for dive into work upon return. Want to get paid;)

The One True Annoyance Factor

On any other day the recipient of that e-mail would be highly annoyed by it. But today, as a certain fictional Centauri once said “today is a verrry different day.” The answering e-mail read:

To One True Annoyance Factor

Extension of five weeks approved. Twisted horn idea acceptable.
Pay and work schedule rearranged so to alleviate concerns.
BTW, no bets taken.
Also, suggest you try natural EXO skel with three strands and extras.

Great Buffaloed One

* * * * * * * * * * * *

On almost any other day, the 87-year-old sheep ewe would be seated in her favorite chair in her living room or the one out on the front porch. The retired astronomer/astrophysicist would be reading something or listening in on some local bit of gossip from a visitor as she had for years now.

“Slowly vegetating away,” she thought to herself in self-honesty.

But, today, today was a verrry different day. She sat in her living room, a very changed room from what it had been a week ago. About half of the original furniture was removed and most of what was left pushed up against one of two walls. Her canes and walker were in the storage shed, she might need them some time in the future, but not today.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

When she was young, the bunny doe would go through each day on her family’s farm doing her chores and dreaming of a future of bright lights and wondrous duty in a far great city. Later, denied those dreams, she changed focus and selected another ‘calling’, one dealing with the very small things of the Universe. In her time, she worked with her brilliant mentor and his team of mammals. Days of calculations, study of new data, working to slowly, slowly extract a small (or not so small) secret from a grudgingly tight fisted universe. An “out of the blue” event occurred that forever changed that; changed her life in ways she was still trying to come to grips with. Now, for her, any day could be a verrry different day.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

It was summer school break and, on any other day, the 17-year-old black fleeced ewe would be out with her femfriends trading gossip and talking boys, or with one of those males her age. But, today, today was a verrry different day. Today she was seated in front of a computer with VR goggles on, and not playing any number of games that could be on it. No, she was visually checking light intensity variations of a star that orbited along the edge of the galaxy. When she was done with it, she would go to another one, and then another. The data was from NASA’s overwhelmingly vast electronic storehouse that held raw data collected from a dozen space based observatories, orbiters that circled other planets and moons in the solar system, and yet to be checked data from flyby probes. Ground roving robots on two different worlds contributed their own streams of ones and zeros to that bank as well, some of it looked at quickly, the rest of it stored away for later evaluation. That data was accessible to anyone who had a connection to the Net. It could be viewed and/or downloaded for review at a mammal’s leisure. All over Terra, civilian/amateur scientists sifted through bits and pieces of, not a mountain, but an entire mountain range of unprocessed scientific data. Over the years those unseen, by most of the world’s population, mammals made discoveries. Most were small, nailing down the accuracy of a star’s orbital path and velocity. Confirming the dips in a star’s light curve to detect an exoplanet, or the ever so slight red and blue shifts of that star that “said” that something pulled it one way then another. Checking and refining the light spectrum of stars, even galaxies, to sort out what elements were, or not, in them and in what quantities. Once in a great while, something odd turned up and the finder gained some notoriety, mainly within the scientific community, for doing so. Those events were rare, and while the teen ewe had some ‘visions’ of that happening with her, she would go on with the meticulous work of finding the little bits and confirming other small bits.

“The Universe is ultimately made up of minute bits,” the bunny doe told her. “And, as such, it is the observation of those bits, subatomic particles to tiny light changes that, in time, give us the bigger picture. As we do so, our knowledge and view of the universe, ever so slightly, changes, becomes, hopefully, more clear.”

The teen noted something and sent it off to her elder relative barely 20 feet away. That done, she moved to the next item.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The fox scanned the room. The changes made in it over the last week were, to put it mildly, great. Sharla Gibson sat at the center of a half circle desk with three computer screens set on it. She would work at one, then move to another, work at it, then move again. At a pair of chalkboards, Judy, the bunny doe, formulated and wrote up mathematical equations. Currently, she was working at refining the mass of a planet whose gravity exerted an ever so tiny tug on its parent star thus causing it to ‘wobble’ slightly. While there was a computer and dry erase boards on hand for her to use, she was more comfortable working chalk and a blackboard.

“A creature of her time,” he thought.

That wasn’t quite true. Judy sat on a stand that was a product of today; a light weight electric motorized four leg affair that could be moved right/left, forward/back with the use of a small joystick. A three position toggle switch adjusted the height up or down. With it, she could reach any place on the six-foot-high by ten-foot-long work surfaces.

He looked back to Sharla as she gazed intently at something on one of her screens and then wrote down something. Then, she got up, went to Judy, and handed her the note. The doe looked it over, moved back down her line of symbols, erased a few and wrote in some new ones. Next, she moved up the line and made other changes to reflect the new data. Sharla scanned the finished product, nodded, and returned to her comp. desk.

“Old or not, that one has too good a mind to just let it dry up and blow away,” he thought.

Nick looked to where Sheela, Sharla’s great-great-granddaughter sat and worked, then checked the clock. He got up and went over to her.

“Sheela, time you took a break. Give your eyes and the rest of you a rest,” he whispered to her.

“Two, three minutes more, I’ve got a new red shift to nail down,” she replied.

“Three minutes from…now,” he said as he started a stopwatch he kept with him.

The teen knew he’d pull the goggles off if she wasn’t done at the end of the time. Two minutes and 17 seconds later, she “fired” the refinement off to her grandmother. Then took off her goggles and rubbed her eyes for a few seconds.

“I’ll go nap out,” she said as she got up.

“You do that. These two have got enough to work with for the rest of the day,” he said.

After she departed, Nick returned to his own table and chair and then checked his e-mail drop sites. One had a message in it and he downloaded it. Opening the file, the fox read Great Buffaloed One‘s message. The first sentence got an eyebrow raise, the Chief was being generous and that was a little unusual. The second one he nodded to. The third complimented the first one and the fourth, well…. The last one was the one that really got Nick’s attention. To most anyone else it looked like someone was suggesting that he try some kind of product, Nick knew it was anything but. No wonder Bogo was being magnanimous.

“Oh yes, he thought. “Today is a verrry different day!”

Chapter Text

Chapter 11: Path Changes

Sheela Rae Woolverson, stripped down to a t-shirt and panties, then slipped into her bed and pulled the cover up to her shoulders. She really wanted to do some more work but Nick was right, she did need to take a break; to nap out for a time if not out and out sleep. The fox acted as time keeper for them, making sure they took breaks, even that they eat something. Sometimes, not often, he let them run on for a longer stretch but they had to make up for it in additional break time.

“Lost in your work has real meaning to me, now,” she thought. “Though I’m an amateur compared to nana Sharla and Judy.”

That was the truth! When those two got the bit between their teeth on something there was nothing, short of Nick, that stopped them. Of the two, it was Judy that would immerse herself the deepest into the work.

“Almost like, in doing so, she’s trying to forget something,” Sheela mused.

Being the third generation prodigy of a famous (or ‘infamous’, depending on who you asked in the science community) scientist, Sheela was no stranger to astronomy and some of its related sciences. Acting as caregiver (sentry, actually) for Sharla exposed her to more of it as her elder, while not active in the ‘field’, still kept up on things. Her puberty hit and, as a result, the hormonal boost had distracted her from that and more toward the ‘study’ of males of her, and some others, species.

Her mind not really ready for sleep, it did a slow drifting scan of the events of the past days, changes that had occurred. They began slowly, small, minute. Sharla’s affinity with Judith and, less directly, with Nick was the start of things and didn’t spill over to Sheela very much. When real change began, she had no trouble fixing the time, even the place, when it had. It was two weeks ago within a nature preserve miles away. Even now, the memories of the eerie, incredibly emotion stirring music that played there sent shivers through her body and sensations of wonder through what many would call her soul. And not just hers, that music shook through the others there. Her great-great-grandmother Sharla had tears in her eyes, seen when she had removed the mask she’d worn. This was something Sheela had never seen before. Judith, Judy, was, at times, awed and nearly unnerved at the same instant. How it affected Nick was anyone’s guess.

“The saying ’Still waters run deep’ was coined with him in mind,” she thought.

After the one mammal concert, Sheela got to talk with the musician, Cordell Madis. The music the badger composed was placed online for sale. His public appearances were rare and always sold out in a matter of minutes. To have him here doing a gig for just the four of them was something that bordered on the unimaginable. How on Terra Nick, and it had to be Nick, Sheela knew, got him here…. After talking for a bit, he asked if she had an autograph book (on Nick’s advice, she’d brought one). Cordell signed it then inked his hands and pressed them, palms down, on the page thus leaving his hand prints there. Sheela thought she might faint, she had never heard of him doing that.

“Tell me, miss, when the music played over you, what did you see?” he asked as he wiped the ink off his hands with a cloth.

She told him of the feelings and sensations that she felt.

“That’s nice. But, it doesn’t answer my question. Again, behind, in your eyes, your mind’s eye, if you will, what…did…you…see?” he reiterated.

She called up what memories she could, they were sharp but oddly fragmented.

“I know I saw something, a lot of things, landscapes that were wondrous and some that were equally…terrible, grim. Things of beauty, and things I don’t think I want to look hard at. Scenes serene and others chaotic, jumbled….”

Struggling, she stopped.

“I…I don’t think I have the words to describe a lot of what went through my mind.

Again, she stopped to think.

“I don’t think there are words in the language to describe, define, what there was,” she finished.

He took several heartbeats to think over her answer.

“Give me your book,” he said.

After Nick helped the badger break down and store his gear away in a van, the fox got the women back into the RV and readied to take them back to Bunnyburrow. Nick saw the puzzled, almost dazed, look on Sheela’s face. She held her autograph book like she thought it might try to escape.

“He signed it, right?” he asked.

Sheela went on looking out of the front windshield then, without turning her head, hands the book over to the vulpine. Nick opened it and saw the signed and double paw printed page.

“That’s rare,” he commented.

“Look at the next one,” the teen said.

Flipping the page, Nick looked. It was the same as the first except that Madis had added a few words to it.

“Cordell Madis, to the awakened Dreamer, Sheela,” they read.

Nick closed the book up and handed it back.

“Take good care of that,” he said. “You are only the fourth person I know of that he’s done that for.”

The next day, things picked up speed. Sharla on the phone reestablishing old links to those in her field and setting up new ones. A day later, the arrival of the computer gear and other things that now roosted in a very changed livingroom. A tech. team coming in and, in two days, wiring up the place and setting up and testing all of the electronics to be sure everything was right. They even had a satellite uplink that used a laser transceiver. The down and up load speeds flat out ‘out ran’ anything else in the Burrows. A little smile crossed her face at remembering how many residents had asked if they could get that kind of service. All of Bunnyburrow was atwitter about their most famous resident getting back to work. Sheela came across an online science journal article that said “Confirmed that Sharla Gibson Woolverson is getting back into the swim of things in astronomy. All fishes and sharks in that sea; WATCH YOUR TAILS!! The BIG fish is back and on the prowl!” Sharla fended off requests for interviews.

“After I’ve been back ‘in harness’ for a few months, at least, I’ll give consideration to granting one or two of those!” she declared.

A few days of refining things and getting their mental processes ‘calibrated’ and meshed and they were in ‘harness’. And now, here she was, ready to get back to it when her nap was done. And all of it due to a chance encounter at a fair with a bunny and a fox. Binary rogue forces that jolted the orbital paths of those they came in contact with onto new trajectories.

“Isn’t that being a little dramatic?” a part of her questioned.

“Is it? Look at the effect they’ve had, not just on Sharla and myself. The effects are radiating outward into the scientific community, even some of it into Bunnyburrow. Maker only knows where it will go from there,” another part responded. “And has it hurt anything? What would things be like if they hadn’t appeared?”

“I’d be a normal teenager doing what most teens do. And nana Sharla, she’d be hobbling along, slowly wasting away,” Sheela murmured to herself.

She let her mind drift for a time, then….

“What are you two doing to us? Where are we going? And what is it going to look like when we get to the end?” Sheela questioned.

Right on the ragged edge of sleep, an image came into her mental view. It resolved itself into a likeness of Cordell Madis. He regarded her with an expression of enigmatic amusement.

“End?”

A chuckle that is warm, soothing, and something else.

“Awakened Dreamer, what makes you think there is one?!”

Chapter Text

Chapter 12: Twisted Horns and Twisted Life Code

The black fleeced teenage ewe looked at the four rectangular pieces of card stock paper she held in her hoof hands.

“I can’t BELIEVE he did it!” she thought in stunned astonishment.

“Why not? Crazy fox is a ‘wizard’; he got Cordell Madis to do a private concert so why is this such a surprise,” that mental voice in her head said.

What she held were tickets to a Gazelle concert in Zootopia. Not just any concert, it was the BIG one that she held once a year at the biggest venue in Savanna Central. The tickets, some 73,000 of them, had sold out in just under eight minutes after going on sale. Sheela had tried to score one but had no luck doing so. Neither had any of her friends.

“I’ll get swamped by them if they find out about these!” she murmured to herself.

“Then be sure they don’t,” the afore mentioned fox said as he eased the tickets out of her grasp then tucked them inside that pocketed vest he nearly always wore. “As far as anyone is to know, you and Sharla are invited to Zootopia for a tour to include sightseeing and shopping and attendance to the concert is an ’out of the blue’ surprise that happens while you are there.”

“Get used to keeping secrets, dear,” Sheela’s 87-year-old relative said as she worked at her computer station. “For all the talk of science being an open venue it has more than its share of those.”

“Amen to that!” declared Judy, not looking up from her work at a table.

Sheela looked the bunny’s direction to see her slip the center portion of the rule she held to a position, look at that point, then recorded something on a paper.

“Before she showed up, I had never even heard of a slide rule, let alone seen one in use,” she thought.

“A slide rule, also called a slip stick, is a mechanical analog computer. It is used primarily for multiplication, and division as well as functions such as exponents, roots, logarithms, and trigonometry, but typically not for addition or subtraction,” Sharla explained to her. “It was developed in the 1600s and underwent several major, and a number of minor, refinements over the following centuries. As astronomical work requires precise computations, a steel slide rule about two meters long was used, in 19th century Greminy, at one observatory. It had a microscope attached, giving it accuracy to six decimal places. The famed rocket engineer, Doctor van Bramm, bought two Nestler slide rules in the 1930s. Ten years later he brought them with him when he moved to the States after World War II to work on the space effort. Throughout his life he never used any other slide rule. He worked with them while heading the NASA program that landed mammals on the moon in 1970. They have often been specialized to varying degrees for their field of use, such as excise, proof calculation, engineering, navigation, etc. There are some circular versions, mainly for air navigation, the E6-B comes to mind, that are still used by some pilots and air crew to calculate fuel burn, wind correction, time en route, and other items before takeoff, and ground speed, estimated fuel burn and updated estimated time of arrival while in flight.”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

They drove the RV to the outskirts of the city and parked it at a long term lot. Changing to a heavy duty SUV that had New Mexally license plates, Nick drove them into Savanna Central. After checking in at the hotel (twin adjoining suites) they stored their stuff in their respective rooms and then went out on a quick tour. It had been years since Sharla’s last visit to the city so there were a goodly number of changed and new things for her to see. Sheela had had a few forays into Zootopia over the last two years so was more familiar with parts of it. Still, there were a lot of places she hadn’t seen. She was particularly thrilled with the cable gondola ride in the Rain Forest district and having a double layered long coat for their trip through Tundratown was a decided asset. Shopping was limited to a few souvenirs and odds and ends. Not so, the next day.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

“Please, Papa! I SWEAR that I will NEVER doubt you again on your wisdom about females if you’ll help me get out of this alive!” Nick, his eyes canted skywards, thought in what was approaching desperation.

He trailed the two ewes and Judy as they walked down along the wide sidewalk. The one advantage to that was that they ‘broke’ any mammal or group of mammals coming the other way off to one side or the other. That cleared a path for him, and considering the load in his arms, he needed all the help he could get!

“One of thee most hazardous things any male can get themselves into is a dedicated shopping spree with a female. That hazard increases geometrically with each additional female added in,” Nick’s late sire had informed him years before.

Wilde was, now, living that endangerment. His two arms, lower parts out and forward like the forks of a forklift, were stacked high with boxes and packages. It wasn’t so much that they were heavy as that they blocked his view of what was in front of him. During one stop he had rearranged the load so that he had a slot to see through but it was still a pretty limited view.

“Though I have to admit, the view of a certain bunny’s tail and sway of her connected hips has some decided appeal,” he thought.

Sharla glanced over her shoulder back to the pile of boxes that had a pair of feet and legs, then looked to the rabbit walking close beside her.

“You think we’ve messed with him enough?” she asked in a conspiratorial whisper.

Judy looked back then ahead once again.

“Nah, he’s good for a couple of more packages, at least,” she replied, a wicked expression on her face.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The music was as much felt as heard throughout the great hall. Tens of thousands of mammals danced and moved to it. On a large raised dais danced six of the biggest male tigers many had ever seen. They wore mid-thigh length pants and their fur threw off glints of light from the glitter on it. The big felines moved with a grace and agility that made any ferret, martin, mink, otter, or weasel envious. At the center of that dais was the star of the show, Gazelle. She wore a brief halter top and a frilly hip and upper, very upper, thigh length skirt with a belt of shiny bangles around the top of that skirt. She belted out song after song while doing her own dance moves.

“We could catch and store all of the energy being expended here it could power a large chunk of the city!” Judy commented as she moved and gyrated with the music.

“There’s some mammals working on that,” Nick said as he danced with the rabbit.

He alternated in dance partners, Judy, Sharla, and Sheela, with each song. In spite of her 87 years, Sharla held her own in dance moves. A ten-minute break came up and…

“Fox has got to visit the males room for some relief,” he said.

Judy snagged the lapels of his shirt to pull herself up on him.

“Don’t be gone too long,” she, her eyes lidded almost shut, said in a husky tone of voice as she touched her nosepad to his.

“Yup, you two are ‘gone’,” Sharla thought, watching them. “Just remember to invite me to the wedding.”

Barely a moment away from the girls, Nick felt a band around his wrist vibrate; two short, two long, and then one more short.

“Like he would miss being here,” the fox thought with a grin.

After his visit to the restroom, Nick moved down along some of the passageways. As he did, he placed an earplug into the channel of each ear. They were selective sound plugs, letting some frequencies pass through while blocking others. A red LED began flashing slowly and, as he moved along, it flashed at an ever increasing rate until it remained constantly on. A turn and there he was. One would have expected that there would be some mammals passing through this area (it was happening everywhere else) but none were. That there were several high and ultrasonic frequency units broadcasting tones that made said mammals uncomfortable might have had something to do with that. So, only the fox and the buffalo were present.

“Get on with it, Wilde,” Bogo said. “I don’t want to miss anymore of the concert than I have to!”

Nick filled Bogo in about Sharla and her knowledge of whom Judy really was. The Chief’s expression remained neutral through the impromptu brief.

“You believe her to be trustable in staying silent on that…inconvenient revelation?” he asked.

“I believe she will. She’s…recovered a friend that she thought well and truly lost and has no desire to risk doing without her again. Also, as she’s pointed out to me, just who would really believe her if she talked about it.”

Nick grinned.

“She said she has no particular desire to be fitted out with a straight jacket and live out her days in a padded room,” he related.

Bogo thought on that.

“I’ll have a quiet check done,” he said, at last. “We may end up pulling her into the team.”

“Do one on her great-great-granddaughter, Sheela Rae Woolverson, as well. She’s showing a lot of promise for one who is 17 years old,” Nick recommended. “And, where Sharla goes, she goes.”

The buffalo nodded. Then, he gave Nick a long look.

“Yes?” the vulpine questioned.

“A ‘heads up’, Wilde. Coombs is rocking the boat. Getting more and more insistent about getting bio samples, a lot of them, from Judith. He bypassed me, sent a couple of his requests straight up to my superior. I’ve vigorously dressed him down for that, but….”

Nick thought on that as he looked at his administrative superior.

“Why tell me this?” he asked.

A short quiet where only the faint music of concert sounded.

“Nicholas, several of my older relatives were in Eirrope during the last big war there. Most were involved in the liberation, if you want to call it that, of many of the concentration camps there. They’ve seen what unfettered ‘science for science’s sake’ leads to.”

A second later, Nick stepped forward and extended his right hand out. Bogo took it in his own and shook it.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

As she trailed Bogo, Judy remembered her…their departure from Bunnyburrow. Sharla’s hugging of her was firm and warm but, there was something else in it, a reluctance to let go.

“Don’t be a stranger!” the old ewe almost growled.

She looked up to the close standing Nick.

“That goes for you too, scoundrel!” she said.

Nick gave her a slow, deep bow but said nothing in return.

Judy was already in the RV’s “shotgun” seat when Sheela came up to Nick.

“I’m sorry, but I have to ask,” she said.

“What is it?”

“How in Terra did you get Cordell to do the private concert for us? I know that he’s been offered hundreds of thousands, even a million or two, dollars to do something similar and turned almost all of them down.”

The vulpine gazed at her for a few seconds.

“What I tell you goes ABSOLUTELY no farther than you and me. Understood?”

She nodded.

“Cordell and I hail from the same neighborhood and we were pretty good buds. He always wanted to work, compose and play, synthesizer music, said it had a flexibility that traditional music did not. When he got out on his own, he was barely making ends meet. What he had left over wasn’t able to pay for even the cheapest unit of gear he needed. Add to that that a couple of items had to be imported and the tariffs on them, at that time, drove their costs waaaay up. I got a letter from him one time that he was just about despairing at ever getting to be the musician he wanted to be. In my ship’s crew days, I hardly ever spent any of the pay I got. So, I began gathering up things. Getting the ‘local’ stuff wasn’t that difficult, the imported items were a different story. Obtaining them was easy and I could have paid the customs fees but a part of me just couldn’t go that way. So, I used a couple of diversion techniques I picked up from some of the old timers to slip them past the Port Authorities.”

Nick’s eyes went unfocused for a couple of seconds.

“Was my first real smuggling gig, and it felt twice as good in that I not only got through it successfully but that it was, for me, for a good cause. With those items, Cordell got his rig together and started his composing. We stay in contact and, on occasion, I’ve procured a few expensive and hard to get items, now and then, and slipped them through to him.”

“Even now?!” Sheela questioned.

“Last time was about a year and a half ago. Custom made piece from a country that has an embargo, unjustified, in my view, on it.”

Sheela looked Nick over as if trying to decide if he was feeding her a line. Then she moved forward to give him a hug and a smooch.

“You really ARE a scoundrel!” she stated.

“I prefer the term ‘rogue’,” he said with a grin.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The one thing Judy had not expected upon return to the ‘Site’ was a call to meet the Chief at the building that contained most of the ‘Complex Watch’ team’s dedicated labs. Once she got there, Judy found herself following the cape buffalo through several corridors to stop at a door where he slipped his security card into a slot, looked into the retina reader and pressed his thumbs to the print reader plate. A click and a buzz sounded and the door open.

“Proceed, Miss Hopps,” he said, waving her through.

Going inside, the rabbit fem found herself in a room with a bewildering array of high tech gear. There was a kind of pedestal, some six feet in diameter with a top that looked to be made of glass, in the center of the room. Two tech. mammals sat at computer stations out to the sides.

“This, Miss Hopps, is….” Bogo began.

“A Mark 23-Baker Sims and Draton holographic display unit, used to display complex 3 dimensional images such as the atomic lattice structures of crystals, metals, and other materials. Also for complex chemical and biological structures. I would guess that this one has been modified, upgraded for use here,” Judy plugged in.

“Impressive, Judith. You are catching up with things in this day and age,” Bogo said.

A mildly smug expression crossed her face at the tone of admiration in his voice.

“Lights!” he called.

The lights went out.

“Bring up the display, slowly.”

In the air above that pedestal, a vague shape appeared. Seconds later, it resolved itself into a more defined form. Judy picked out three evenly spaced structures, with gaps between them, that ‘twisted’ from left to right going from the top downwards. Further sharpening revealed that there were thin ‘beads on string’ like formations centered in each of those gaps. And in the middle open space, was a larger…

“Can you enhance the core structure?” she asked aloud.

They did. Initially, she had thought it was a thicker version of the ‘beads on string’ configurations but the closer, more detailed, view showed that, while similar, it was composed of three ‘strings’ that looked to be woven together like a braided cord. The whole thing had a beauty that would have made any artist rendering it proud.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Judith Lavern Hopps, meet your alien. Or, more to the point, its life code, something equivalent to our DNA,” Bogo told her. “Also, we have confirmed your idea that it does possess a natural exoskeleton.”

The rabbit turned to look at Bogo.

“How? How could you find that out?” she asked.

“Slowly, lights!” he called.

Rather than flashing full on, the lighting increased over several seconds so that it did not flash blind her or the Chief.

“Come with me,” he instructed her.

Through another door and down the corridor, the hulking buffalo led her into a breakroom that was at least twice the size of the one in the audio analysis lab area.

“Be seated,” he said.

Once sitting, he asked her what she would like to drink and after Judy told him, he got it out of one of the vending machines, then set it on the table in front of her. Then, drew up a chair suited to his size and sat down at the table.

“When Wilde brought you in from the complex, we had a medical team check you for possible hidden injuries that he or the EMT’s might not have detected.”

“Yes, Nick told me about it.”

“One of the ER techs, Alex Wood, worked at a major hospital in a big, very big, population center for several years before he joined us. When a mammal was brought in that was a known or suspected victim of an assault, one of his jobs was, if possible, to brush and clean out areas under the claws, on the fingers, and on the fronts and backs of both the hands and the feet. To put ANYTHING that he obtained into evidence bags, mark them, and store them for forensics if they required any of it. He did this with you while in the med center. When you and Wilde did your reenactment of what happened when the alien grabbed you, he noted that you clawed at his hands.”

“Yes, he asked if I’d done the same with the alien and I said ‘yes’.”

Her mind was trying to nudge her on something.

Bogo nodded.

“While you were in the sound lab he went to medical, gathered together the mammals that received you there, and asked if any of them had cleaned out under your claws. Wood went to a side room and came back with his evidence bags. In them we found particles and three small shavings whose initial bio checks did not match up to anything on record. Since then, over the last three months, we have painstakingly analyzed those bits and that structure you saw is what we have put together, thus far.”

Allen William Bogo looked at the diminutive, to him, lapin sitting across from him. For one so small she had accomplished many things since her release from that cocoon. For him to respect her for that was not unwarranted.

“Miss Hopps, our sciences owe you a big debt of gratitude because, in your panic those 61 years ago, you ‘collected’ the evidence that conclusively proves that there is complex, very complex, life beyond our own Terra.”

Chapter Text

Chapter # 13: No Place to Hide

Nick watched as Judy closed up the oversized, for her, folder she had looked through for the third time and then stuffed it into a messenger bag barely big enough for it.

“Big enough to be an old Romane legionnaire’s shield for her,” he mused.

“Okay, I’m off to Bogo’s office,” she said, slinging the bag’s strap over her shoulder.

“I’ll come with you,” Nick said, getting up.

“Nope, not this time, oh vulpine one,” she said with a grin. “Today, the fluff tail goes into the Lair alone. It’ll be more fun to beard the buffalo that way.”

The confident tone in her voice both surprised and assured him. Gone was that terrified bunny that had clung to him so much the first weeks of being back in the world.

“Go get him, Fluff!” Nick said, resuming his seat.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

“Beep!”

“Yes, Miss Howlverson?”

“Chief, Judith Hopps is here and wishes to see you about something.”

Bogo rubbed that spot between his eyes that had suddenly developed a tension ache.

“Send them in,” he said.

“Them?” the receptionist questioned.

“Wait, are you telling me that Wilde isn’t with her?”

“No sir. She’s by herself.”

Most of that tension hit left about as quickly as it had come on.

“Send her in,” he said.

“This won’t be that bad,” he said to himself.

“She’s been in Wilde’s presence for over four months. Enough time for him to have rubbed off onto her,” warned his cautious side.

“Harrumph! The day she gets close to his level of annoyance is the day I file my retirement papers!” the buffalo snorted.

Seeing that oversized messenger bag she carried raised a red flag in his head. It was out of place for her and, therefore, did not bode well. That tension rose again.

“Have a seat, Miss Hopps,” he said, indicating a chair by his desk that was almost her size.

She ignored it and hopped, literally, onto the one at the other side that was more suited to someone Bogo’s size. Judy didn’t sit, she stood there, looking at him. That eye ache was getting upwards to ‘Wilde’ level.

“What can I do for you?”

“Chief Bogo, what do you know of the project my team was working on?” she asked.

Silence. Then….

“Your team was working on creating a doorway, a portal, to a duplicate Terra in one of several theorized parallel universes,” he said.

“That is correct. On each of our 15 tries we stepped up the power higher and higher in our attempt to break through into that world. As you know, all of them failed to do so.”

Bogo nodded.

“Now, what do you know about the 16th try?”

“The only thing we know of that one is that the power request was much lower, lower than even the first attempt.”

It was Judy’s turn to nod.

“The actual request was for 7.15% of that of the first try. Had I had my way, it would have been 4.073%,” she said. “We had an inspiration and redid our calculations and setup as a result, thus the lower power requisition."

Judy opened her bag and pulled out a large folder that had a sheaf of papers in it.

“Before the attempt was to be executed, I was sent to retrieve a piece of gear that was deemed needed for any after event assessment. Thus my being on level 23 instead of in the lab cavern when things went off. Someone activated the intercom on all levels and there was an excited cheer with hoots and hollers going on. The sounds of success. Thus, I believe that my team did succeed in getting the portal established.”

Bogo nodded, not sure where this was going.

“The after…disaster report speculates that this is what happened and that it is through that portal that a number of unknown entities invaded the complex. It was, also, theorized that, without power continually applied to it, that said portal would collapse and disappear in two weeks, at the most.”

Again, Bogo nodded when she paused.

“To my knowledge, no one has done any reevaluation of this premise,” the bunny said as she set the folder on the desk. “I would like for you to find someone, preferably several someones, to peer evaluate these calculations.”

“What are they about?” Bogo asked.

“A recheck of the figures after applying updated research data in quantum physics gained over the last six decades.”

Bad vibes trilled through the Chief’s body.

“And they show?”

“That it is likely, almost a certainty, that that portal is not gone. That it is, indeed, still there, open to that other Terra even as we speak.”

Quiet.

“And that it will continue to remain there for a minimum of 280,000,000 years, more likely longer, a LOT longer,” Judy finished.

An ice ball two feet in diameter and having the consistency of titanium alloyed steel took hold in Bogo’s gut. Not just because of her observation but, also, because of something he knew that she did not.

“Forget the retirement papers and don’t even THINK of trying to run for the hills!” said that inner voice in tired resignation. “There’s no place to hide!”

“Miss Hopps, a…clarification, if you will,” he said.

“Yes?”

“You stated that you wished for a lower level of power to be used, would you explain why?”

“The calculations ‘said’ that that amount of energy would accomplish the task with a tiny bit more to allow for some probable error. The rest of the team, including Prof. Bronson, decided to go with a greater level to more ensure the likelihood of success. I objected but was overruled.”

“Your reasons?” inquired Bogo.

“Chief, do you know anything about an outdoor activity called ‘ice fishing’?” she asked.

“Yes. One that is practiced almost exclusively by predator species types,” he answered.

“Correct. One goes out onto the ice of a frozen lake, pond, or river, makes a hole in the ice, and then commences with their fishing.”

He nodded in agreement.

“Now, one can make that hole in, basically, one of two ways. The first is that they use either a hand saw or, these days, a battery powered one to cut the hole. The other is for those who are not quite so patient; the use of some kind of explosive charge to get that done quickly. Both accomplish the same task but one is, in its way, very precise while the other less so and, in its wake, leaves additional consequences.”

“As in that there are fractures, seen and unseen, in the ice that could result in the ice breaking when any weight is put on them,” Bogo reasoned out.

Judy nodded.

“So, your concerns were, still are, that there are other, unforeseen, things…consequences in the over powering of the event.”

“Correct,” she relied.

“Do you have any idea, even a glimmering, of what those consequences could be?”

“Unknown tends to mean exactly that. But, there was one that I raised in the debate over the power level to be used.”

“And that is?”

“That, if more power was applied, there was…is, an increased probability of more than one portal forming. Perhaps, as many as several.”

The cape buffalo was quiet for several seconds.

“Thank you, Miss Hopps. I’ll forward these for review,” Bogo said in a barely maintained casual tone as he tapped on the folder.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Is there anything else?”

“No sir.”

“Then, good day.”

He watched the rabbit doe hop to the floor then leave. Bogo held off for three verrrrry long seeming minutes, then punched the intercom key.

“Miss Howlverson, is Miss Hopps gone?”

“Yes sir. Headed out the door right after she came out of your office,” the cheetah fem responded.

“That should get her far enough away so that her hyped up hearing doesn’t….” he thought.

“You are to get hold of the damned annoyance factor and get him in here, NOW!” the Chief ordered.

Chapter Text

Chapter 14: “Second Star to the Right….”

As he walked the grounds of the ‘Site’, Nick found himself in a curious state of mind.

“If anyone had told me before today that I would find the Chief in a state closely akin to fear I would have laughed in their faces and said ‘You make funnie joke!’ in a bad Hollywood style Rus accent,” he thought.

Yet, barely 40 minutes ago, that was exactly what he’d seen. Miss Howlverson’s call that demanded he be in Bogo’s office last Wednesday had him wondering what he’d done to rile the Big Buff up.

“I was thinking that, whatever it was, I needed to be able to do it again,” the vulpine mused.

As it turned out, it wasn’t anything he had done, it was Judy’s doing.

“Wow, Jude! You said you were going to beard him in his Lair. Didn’t know that you would peel all of his head fur, plus ears and horns, off as well!” he said to himself in a tone of admiration for her.

Once in Bogo’s office, the buffalo brought Nick up to speed on what Judy had come to see him about.

“Okay, Chief. I understand your concern but I don’t see the need to be so riled up about it. Nothing has happened over nearly 62 years. That would seem to indicate that, whomever…whatever came through and grabbed, or whatever, the complex mammals either didn’t stay long for some reason or just isn’t interested in we mammals and our world for reasons of their own.”

Nick placed a hand on the folder sitting on the desk.

“Judy’s calculations could be wrong. Maybe the portal, and any others, if they opened, have collapsed.”

He glanced at the folder, then back to the Chief.

“You are going to have these checked, reviewed, right?” he asked.

“Yes. We have various institutions and individuals that we give “what if” scenarios to, so this, for them, will be just another of those,” Bogo said.

“Again, I’m not sure what the problem is in this. Other than we don’t have any proof…”

“Due to a certain vulpine slacking off on his original job with us,” the Chief tossed in.

“The site guard one or the exploring one?” Nick asked, tongue in cheek. “Besides, are you really arguing with the results that have come from paying attention to Judith?”

He looked at the folder once more.

“Aside from her scaring you to white furdom with this.”

He waited. Bogo knew he knew that there was more to this.

“Wilde, what I’m about to tell you goes no further unless I clear you to do so. Understood?”

“Fill me in, Oh Great Buffaloed One.”

He did, and in barely a minute, the fox understood why Bogo was in that close to panic state. He shook his head, wondering just what the folks back then were thinking.

“It was a time when they were pretty much throwing anything, scientific and technical, up against the ‘wall’ just to see what kind of result they’d get,” his own mental voice told him.

“True,” he thought. “But this?! If Judy is remotely right in her estimation of more portals forming, then this is plain crazy, if not flat out insane! And that doesn’t even take into account any other probable, likely real, other events…aftereffects that may occur beyond that!”

After that discussion and its revelations…

“Chief, I had a talk with Judy while we were on the return trip and she’s agreed to come out and stay at my place on the complex site. Things considered, I think it’s a good idea to put some distance between her and Coombs.”

“Agreed,” Bogo said as he nodded.

“Also…”

Nick pulled a couple of sheets of paper from a pocket.

“…this is a list of supplies I’d like delivered out to the complex as soon as possible.”

The Chief looked it over, then nodded.

“I’ll have supply get on it,” he said.

He looked up from the list.

“One more thing, Wilde. We’ve built out Judith’s genome and have been matching it up with all of the DNA samples we’ve managed to obtain from her family,” he said.

“And?” Nick prompted.

“Most of it, allowing for a percentage point or two of error, is as it should be…”

“But?”

“There are several…anomalies, ‘mutations’, they say, that don’t match up to anything in her family’s gene line.”

“Any ideas on what they are?”

“Aside from her enhanced hearing (Nick kept Judy’s unerring blind shot on him to himself), no,” Bogo said. “We’re good at making ‘maps’ of genomes, even know what a lot of the…’locations’ are/do. But, there are things that still remain a mystery to us, at this time….”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

“Fluff, you ready to go?” Nick asked.

“Packed up what stuff I didn’t take on the trip and ready to go,” she said.

Nick stopped in front of her, knelt down, and set his hands lightly on her shoulders.

“Judy, I appreciate that you trust me. It means a lot,” he said, just quelling his impulse to stroke her ears.

She was a little less restrained.

“How could I not have faith and trust in the gallant knight who rescued me from the ‘dragon’s den’?” she said in a voice that sent a quiver through him as she stroked the side of his cheek and muzzle with one paw.

“With what I’m sure is coming, I hope I’m worthy of that,” he thought.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The drive was a long reminder of the boring coloration and topography of the almost flat valley floor set between the two low level mountain ranges. He noted that Judy, at times, glanced off to their right, as if she were looking for something there.

“After the…shutdown of the complex they took out all of the high tension power cables and towers. What power there is, that is at the ‘shack’, comes from an underground cable, plus there’s a couple of propane powered backup generators that are fueled by two 500 gallon tanks,” he explained. “Turned out to be a good thing as, with the advent of recon sats, it helped hide evidence that anything was out here. It’s with the knowledge that those satellites were coming online, that they decided to cover up the five entrances to hide them and camoed the other by making it look like an old, barely maintained storage building. They thought about extending it out some 25 feet to stow some small to medium sized vehicles and other stuff inside but decided to just push, and pull out the decoy vehicles with tow bars. They do the same with the pallets that hold nonvehicle stuff. Having that material here gives the excuse for the ‘need’ to have a guard presence out by it.”

“I still think that’s a cruel way to get mammals to…’test’ if that fear field is still there!” Judy grumbled.

“Well, as long as I’m around, that’s not going to be an issue,” Nick replied.

Arriving at the “shack”, Judy looked it over as they pulled up to the front.

“Some ‘shack’! From the sound of it, I was expecting a three or four room rough cabin,” she said.

She estimated the building to be some 90 feet long by 30 feet in depth. Except for what looked like a kind of drum tower at one end, it was a single story building. A detached two, buffalo sized, vehicle garage was set at the other end.

“Ranch style, I believe they call it,” she thought.

Except for the garage, the exterior, even that three story tower, was coated with, if not built of, a layer of adobe.

“Back when they started this little ‘testing’ project they thought that they would have at least three mammals out here; one to cover each eight-hour shift. The tower was a cover in that they were to use it to do long distance visual checks now and then. As such, they built this big enough to accommodate, at minimum, three people at least Bogo’s size. It was over the first year that they figured out that a single mammal was a better idea because when one of them got curious enough to check out the entrance the other two would know something VERY out of the ordinary had happened. That presented a security, and publicity, headache that could be done without,” Nick explained as he parked their SUV.

“One would think that they would have anticipated that problem before even starting,” Judy said as she got out.

“I believe someone brought that point up but there was some regulation that insisted that there be two or more on site for safety and some other reasons. I think they were reluctant to write up an exemption for that reg. because it might be seen as an indication that there was something…odd involved,” Nick said as he pulled a couple of cases out of the back of the vehicle.

“From what you say, that didn’t last long,” the bunny observed as she hauled out a couple of her bags.

“Rare as it is, there are times when practicality asserts itself quickly, even in a government/military organization,” said the vulpine as he headed for the front door.

“A miracle of Divine proportions!” Judy marveled, with a very humorous tone.

Once inside, she saw that Nick wasn’t kidding about the size of the accommodation. The ceiling was at least 11 feet high if not closer to 12. To say that the front room and most of the others were spacious, especially for her, got into understatement territory. The kitchen was set up for small mammals on one side and the big ones on the other (that included the appliances) and the bathrooms (three of those) took in account, with some “play”, the different sizes as well. Same went for the washers and dryers, even ironing boards, in the utility room.

“Even without that tower, this place could comfortably house an average rabbit family from my time,” Judy commented.

Nick noted, as with other times, that she avoided using her own family on any such comparisons. She had never asked him anything about them.

“If Sharla filled her in on her parents and sibs, she did it out of my earshot,” he thought.

“Heh, you should see the basement!”

“What?! There’s more?!” she exclaimed.

“The contractor suggested putting it in with an eye for cool storage and to be a place for burrowing species…”

He directed a look her way.

“… to be comfortable in.”

“And you’ve had it all to yourself for over a year?”

“Yup. I’ve had some accommodations somewhat more luxurious than this but never as roomy,” Nick said as he headed back out to unload more stuff.

After 40 some minutes of work, the SUV was emptied and their stuff stowed away in the house. Nick grabbed a case he hadn’t unpacked and hauled it up to the top of the tower where he spent almost an hour on the roof there. After coming back down, he did some work on his ‘on site’ comp.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

A couple of trucks arrived the next day and, as they unloaded, Nick checked the cargo manifests against what was there. When the last of 16 pallets were downloaded and matched up, he signed for the consignment. Judy was amazed to see that each pallet had 18 small rubber tires, six, each, close, about ten inches, from each end and another six in the middle. Two long metal bars were hooked up on same side corners then the pallet was pushed back into the “storage building”. Once parked, those bars were twisted about half a turn and the pallet settled to the ground. When all 16 were inside, the crews departed.

“I take it that they know not to go inside,” Judy said, looking at the fox.

“They are the same ones who move the decoy vehicles and such in and out of there. So, yes, they definitely know not to,” he replied.

“What is all of that?” the bunny asked, waving a paw towards the pallets.

“Supplies I’ll be moving down into the complex. After I complete the exploration of a level, I endeavor to set up a couple of supply caches on it in support of my foray down to the next one.”

“I take it that you don’t just move those established caches down to the next level.”

“Nope, they stay in place. I always like a lot of ‘backup’, when I can get it, in case something goes wacky.”

He looked to Judy.

“As an old survival saying goes ‘Better to have it and not need it then need it and not have it’,” he pointed out.

Judy gazed at the shelter, her eyes taking an unfocused, faraway look. Nick eased himself a little closer to her.

“What are you thinking, Fluff?”

“It looks so, ordinary…plain. One wouldn’t imagine in a million years that it barely covers so many secrets, so many unexplained things,” she said in a soft toned voice.

Over the next few days, Nick labored to move those supplies down into the complex. He used hand trucks for the first level of the move then slid them down ramps (they covered about a third of the staircase) set on the stairs. He explained that they would be stashed on levels five and six for later movement down to lower levels. Judy was surprised at how fast that pile of materiel disappeared into the ground. She did not spend all of her time just watching Nick at work. Most of the time she continued her studies to catch up on researches, worked on her own calculations, and, via the internet, did others requested by Sharla. When the last of the stack went down into the complex Nick called in to Bogo’s office.

“Chief Bogo’s office. Miss Howlverson speaking,” the cheetah fem answered the incoming call.

“Greetings, pretty spotted one,” Nick’s cheerful voice said through the speaker. “Calling to let Chief Buffaloed One know I’m getting back on the job. Be diving in late, like around midnight, tomorrow night and plan on being down for a day, maybe two. Would you pass the word on to our beloved Fearless Leader?”

“I’ll do that right now,” she said.

She keyed the intercom.

“Yes, Miss Howlverson?”

“Apologies for breaking in, Chief. But you did say that you wanted to be informed right away when Mr. Wilde let it be known that he was getting back to work,” she said.

“And that is?”

“Around midnight tomorrow night. He says he plans to be down for a day, maybe two.”

“Good. About time he got back to doing honest work. Thank you for telling me.”

The cape buffalo looked back to the mammal sitting in a chair by his desk.

“Now, mister Coombs, about your request….”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

That band on his wrist began vibrating. Nick checked the clock, 9:52 PM, then went to his ‘on site’ comp., clicked on an innocent looking icon, and looked at the resulting display. Judy was working late, waiting to see him off at midnight.

“Like a mate would do, giving her mate a parting nuzzle and kiss before he goes,” Nick thought.

Shutting down the imaging on the screen, he got up and went into the near cavernous livingroom. Judy sat at a table reviewing some new figures. She looked up as he approached.

“No fox is going to be able to surprise you anymore,” he said in mild amusement.

“Well, not one within about a hundred feet, no. Not unless he’s levitating,” she said with a smile as she got to her feet.

She came to him, those amazing amethyst eyes showing so much ease and trust.

“Going to leave early?” she asked.

Nick, neutral expression on his face, looked at her for several seconds, then knelt to bring his eyes about even with hers.

“Judy, I’m afraid I’m about to tarnish that view you have of me as a knight,” he said in a serious tone.

The eyes peering through the night vision binoculars, watched as the fox and bunny came out of the house and approached the complex entrance. The pair chatted for several minutes then the watcher saw them hug then slowly part. A moment later, the fox went into the ‘shed’.

“Give him an hour, hour and a half,” he thought.

Judy felt restless. This was the first time that Nick was out of her sight, to be away, for a real length of time since their first meeting down in the complex. She was experiencing a little bit of trepidation, and not just because of his absence. The doe had been dictating ideas and random observations onto her smartphone using its ‘record’ function. A glance at a clock revealed that it was close to one in the morning.

“I’m going outside to get some air,” she thought.

Leaving it on record, Judy slipped the phone into her pocket and headed to the front door.

Through the binocs., he saw the front door open and the bunny come out. She closed it behind her then, after taking in some deep breaths, began walking away from the house, going to one side.

“That’s it,” the watcher thought. “Keep moving this way.”

Putting down the night glasses, he picked up the rifle.

The air was crisp, cool, and a little soothing. Its last effect wasn’t working well on Judith for some reason.

“Perfect! She’s well out of the field of view of the camera!” he thought as he set the reticle at a point on the rabbit’s lower body.

A finger pressed down on the firing button.

“Yeeep!” Judy cried.

A sharp pain had ‘exploded’ in her upper right thigh as a “chuff!” sound registered in her ears. A hand slapped down to that place and felt something there. Grasping it, Judy pulled it up to where she could see it. It was some kind of cylindrical shaped item with a short needle at one end and what looked like feathers on the opposite end. A warming numbness radiated out from the impact point and, seconds later, she was lying on her side on the ground, unable to move. She heard the unhurried approach of paw feet; close spaced, light.

“Otter feet,” she thought.

“Miss Hopps, this would be unnecessary if you had cooperated,” said Coombs as he came into her field of view. “With the cocoon material gone and our inability to find anything, if it is there, on how it preserved you, you are the only source left for us to work with. With Wilde gone for hours, if not days, we can proceed with things without his interrupting.”

He knelt in front of her. Coombs held some kind of short roll of material in his paws.

“Looks like it could be a grooming kit roll,” Judy thought.

She was quite sure it wasn’t. He set it on the ground and then unrolled it. Judy could make out, easily, several syringes, a couple of pairs of surgical scissors, and what appeared to be a small pack of evidence bags. She noted that one syringe was not empty, its plunger at about the halfway mark in the barrel.

“Ah, you’ve noticed the ready syringe,” he said. “As we need you as a long term source it’s been decided that things would be better if you no longer had the mental faculties to object, or anything else, to being one. That one contains a drug that, when administered, takes about an hour to…’disable’ your higher mental capabilities, something like the frontal lobotomies preformed in your time. Less mess and work, and a good deal more targeted, though just as permanent. As such, you will come under our control, all decisions made for you as you cannot make them yourself. For those who will ask why you are this way; perhaps it is a delayed effect of being in the cocoon, or the alien’s contact with you. Something else? So many unknowns. We will be properly vague and…mysterious. And by the time you are found, the drugs will have been broken down and most of any residue absorbed by your body. So little left that it won’t show up on any of the tests.”

He picked up one of the sampling syringes.

“However, that part can wait. I wish to take samples before doing so in order to be sure they are as free from possible contamination factors as possible. To act as a baseline to be able to detect any such.”

Coombs noted something, something in the rabbit’s eyes. Even paralyzed, they were able to convey her state of mind, her emotions. Those eyes should display concern, even fear. They showed none of that. The ‘expression’ in those amethyst irises was one of calm, even…faith(?)…trust(?). That did not make sense! The hackles at the back of his neck rose.

“SNNAARRRLLLLLL!!!”

The feral rage in that sound sent the otter into a leap in the air that was at least as high as he was tall! He had no doubt whose throat that savage threat came from.

“What’s he doing here?! He’s supposed to be….”

There was no time to think any further, in the darkness Coombs picked out two pools of blazing emerald fire locked onto him and moving in fast. Instinctive self-preservation kicked in and, like his hunter, the mustelid dropped to all fours to gain better speed and maneuverability.

“Keep eyes on him, eyes on him!” the near panicked thought runs through his mind.

The almost continuous growl, along with the dimly made out attack posture and those eyes, left him in no doubt that this vulpine would rip his throat out, given the chance.

“Move away, get away from him!” Coombs thought, his eyes still on the fox.

If she could have, Judy would have jumped at the sound of the horrified shriek of terror that ripped the air. She’d heard its like only once before.

A grim expression of satisfaction flashed onto Nick’s face. The sound of Coombs’ horrorstruck scream was the sweetest of musics to his ears! Just a dozen feet inside of the cover to the complex entrance the panic blinded otter tried, three times, to slam, without luck, his body through one wall then another. By chance, he managed to get himself pointed out of the entrance and sped past the still fox into the night gloom, screaming all the time. Threat neutralized, Nick dashed over to where Judy lay, sat down, and pulled her into his lap. As he checked her breathing and pulse with one hand, he yanked a small box out of a pouch pocket and hard thumbed the button on it. Some dozen seconds passed….

“What is it, Wilde?” grumbled a voice that still had some sleep in it.

“Coombs was here. He hit Judy with some kind of paralyzer drug!” he snapped. “Her pulse and breathing are a little low but strong. Get a medic chop…”

“Hold one!” came the command.

Nick cradled the bunny closer to him. The look in her eyes made him ache and angered him at the same time; he hadn’t anticipated the nerve paralyzer.

“Hang on there, Fluff. Getting hel…”

“Wilde, medic tiltrotor blading up now! Be airborne in about another minute. ETA your location in about ten to eleven minutes. How’s Judith holding up?”

“Breathing and pulse holding. Her eyes are open and focused. I think she understands everything I’m saying.”

“Keep the line open and advise on any changes so I can pass them on. Where’s Coombs?”

That feeling of savage satisfaction ran through him, again.

“I was trying to capture him. He was trying to evade. Kept his eyes on me and not paying attention to where he was going.”

Nick described the otter’s run into the entrance area plus his failed attempts to create holes in the walls with his body with more than a little savor.

“And then, he ran off,” he finished.

“What direction was he headed?”

The vulpine started to say something, then a long time ago line jumped up in his head.

“Second star to the right and straight on to morning!” he said with a grin.

“Wilde! I don’t have time for your…”

Pause.

“He’s headed due east,” Bogo said.

“You got it, Chiefy Wiefy!”

Another pause.

“Wilde, about how long was he in the field?”

“At least ten, maybe twelve seconds, my best guess.”

Bogo did not fail to hear the tone of relish in the fox’s voice.

“Vindictiveness isn’t one of Wilde’s traits…but, all things considered, I don’t fault him on having any, in this case,” the buffalo thought.

“Got to go. Tiltrotor’s coming in,” Nick called.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Bogo eased into the med center room. Judith, several monitor leads attached to her, slept in the bed. Nick’s chair was pushed up against one side of that bed and he held one of her hands in his left one.

“I don’t think his concern about her is going to go away until she throws off all of the effects of that paralyzer,” he thought. “At least, I have some good news on that. Wish I didn’t have a batch of worrisome info to go with it.”

“How’s she doing?” he murmured to Nick.

“Sleeping well, so far. I was a little worried that all of this might kick up that damned nightmare of her’s again but, so far, that hasn’t happened.”

“Well, news on the drug is that, thus far, there have been no known cases of detrimental side effects on normal mammals…” Bogo began.

He stopped at Nick’s look at him.

“Judy doesn’t quite qualify for that ‘normal’ label anymore,” he reminded.

The Chief nodded.

“Which is why we’ll need to keep an eye on her over the next several months, really longer, to see if there are any long term effects,” he said.

He paused for a bit, looking at the serene expression on Judith’s face.

“Dammit! She does not need or deserve this!” Bogo thought, angrily.

“Anything else?” fox inquired.

“The paralyzer drug is exclusive to the military, Special forces only. They use it to capture hostile mammals alive for interrogation. It’s not something they allow out of their reach easily because of the concern that if samples are obtained that they can be used to create a preventative antidote. Thusly, they are very upset with someone like Coombs getting access to it and are running an investigation of their own. Also, that mind destroyer is, or is supposed to be, under very tight control for obvious reasons. There is no way Coombs could get either of them on his own. The tranq. rifle he had was very, very state of the art with a nonvisible laser range finder that not only gave the distance to target but even detected the wind direction and speed and measured the air density from muzzle to target. All of that is used to auto adjust the scope for a CEP (circular error probability) of under two inches at a range of 100 yards. That’s beyond his ‘reach’ as well.”

Quiet.

“So, someone, someone higher up the chain….”

Bogo nodded.

“I’m having a trace run on both drugs. Unknown to most, each lot of them has a pair of specialized inert chemical designators implanted in them, so narrowing down the lot and where it is secured….”

Nick snorted.

“…won’t be much of a problem. Figuring out who let them out, that’s going to be a different matter. Still, there are only a very few who know enough and have the clout to…”

Bogo’s eyes flicked to Judy, lingered for a couple of seconds, then back to Nick.

“Wilde, until we get this sorted out…if you have any ideas on how to get her someplace safe…”

He got a one-time nod in response.

Chapter Text

Chapter 15: Down Bound

After settling the last item of clothing into place, Judy looked into the full length mirror.

“If dad and mom saw me in this they’d think I was going deep woods mammal,” she said to herself.

The rabbit wore full leg length cargo pants, with six roomy snapdown or zippered pockets. A faded red checked long sleeved flannel (all wool) shirt with somewhat oversized pockets on the outside (and two on the inside). Over the shirt was a vest made of netlike material and possessing a dozen pockets and pouches (serious first aid kit in one pouch, a couple of SOL blankets in another, and a SOL bivvy in a third) on the outside and two big side zippered ones on the inside. A bag containing coiled strips of cloth to be used as footpaw wrappings lay off to one side of her.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

After given a clean, as far as they knew, bill of health, Judy was discharged from the medical center and returned to Nick’s “shack” out on the range. When he wasn’t outside, he hovered close to her to be sure that she was okay. Judy protested, saying she was recovered from the ordeal.

“You’d think I was pregnant and he was the daddy, the way Nick’s acting!” she thought.

More material was stacked up in the “storage shed” but Nick did nothing with those for two days. On the third day, Kay Dillion and Roy McBride came visiting for the day.

“We’re your attendants, and sentries, for the next few days,” the fennec vixen said. “Nick doesn’t want you left alone while he’s packing all that materiel down into the ‘plex.”

“He doesn’t trust anyone else in that ‘duty’, I take it,” Judith said.

“Not by much,” Roy said. “And you should see the security ‘net’ he’s thrown up around this place over the last two days. There’s classified military installations and sites that don’t even have a third of what he’s put up.”

“Quite. I doubt anything bigger than a mosquito can get within 25 to 30 miles of this place undetected,” Kay added.

“So that’s what he was doing,” Judy said.

Over the next two days, Nick attacked the pile of supplies and they vanished with surprising speed into the ground. By the end of the second day, a couple of trucks showed up to drop off a total of 80 empty 50-gallon plastic drums and they vanished into the ‘plex as well. Nick ran a long hose into the building and down the stairwell. It took a good part of a day to fill those drums and, following that, those trucks showed up with another batch of drums and the procedure was repeated. During all of this time, Nick had Judy try a number of military and other long shelf life foods and see what agreed with her. Most of it was alright, though she did reject some things.

“They actually expect some mammals to eat this stuff?!” she said, sourly, after getting down about half of a bar of one particularly unsavory ration. “I’ve had dirt and clay that’s tasted better!”

“Some like them, others don’t. Matter of personal taste, like so many other things,” Nick pointed out.

One more stack of supplies showed up and those vanished as well. Then, Nick came in with a bag and handed it to her.

“Go change into these and tell me what you think,” he said.

Judy did, and found herself dressed almost exactly like Nick that first time she’d laid eyes on him so many months before. Grabbing the bag containing the foot wrappings, she went out into the livingroom where her fox waited.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Not bad. Pants and shirt loose fitting without being too loose. Like that the Velcro side closure on the vest allows for getting into it and out of it easy and quick,” she said as she tossed the bag onto a chair. “Now, go sit on the couch.”

A look of curiosity on his face, the vulpine seated himself. He watched as Judy, first, stretched her arms way above her head, then fanned them out from her sides, and did some twists to the left then right at her waist. Next, she slowly wind milled her arms as she bent her body forward to almost 90 degrees, then backwards as far as she could without stumbling backwards. Bends to the left and right. Then, she went to one wall, started a short dash, and dived forwards to forward roll across the floor in several quick tumbles. A backflip came after that followed by two more.

“You’ve been keeping up on your workouts,” Nick said, in admiration.

“Well, a doe should stay in shape,” she said.

He got a sly wink from her that sent a decidedly sexual thrill through him.

“Even if she’s almost 88 years old, chronologically.”

She checked her clothing out, to be sure nothing was more than a little out of place.

“This is great. Just fine for any farm work or trail hiking in broken hills and such,” she said. “Now, what is this all about? Got some place in the Cannoke (Canadian) backwoods mountains to hide us in?”

“Nope, something a lot better. Though, I fear, not any ways near as scenic,” Nick said as he got up. “Grab that bag and come with me.”

Rabbit trailing him, the tod went out the front door and walked towards the shed, then stopped about 20 feet short of it. Judy came up to stop beside him. He stared at the entrance for a moment. Then….

“Judy, you trust me, right?” he asked.

“To the point that I went along with your trap to catch Coombs. Knowing he was going to incapacitate me with something,” she said.

Pause.

“What I’m about to ask you, now, is going to make that look like small minnows,” he said, eyes still on the entrance.

“What is that?”

Quiet. Then he turned to her, reached out with both hands, and took her paws in his.

“I’m going to go in for the long, likely very long term,” he said.

Pause.

“And I’d like you to accompany me.”

For an indeterminate amount of time, there was only the sound of the wind.

“You…you want me to…walk into the ‘shed’ with you?!” Judy said, incredulously, at last. “Nick, that fear field…and we don’t have the cocoon piece to…”

“Yes, I know,” he said. “Fluff, listen carefully, very carefully, to me.”

She nodded.

“When I was bringing you out, I got to level 14, set you down, and then got that piece on your head. It was big enough to cover you all the way down to your shoulders. I tried to tape it into place but the adhesive wouldn’t stick on the stuff. So, I used a couple of lengths of paracord to hold it. Left it loose enough, I hoped, for some decent air circulation. From there, I got you up on my back again and then slow walked up to 13 then eased my way up to 12, where that field starts. You didn’t react. Level 11, no problem, then 10, 9. I made it to seven when, all of a sudden you cried out and moved around some. Quickly dropped you down and by the time I turned around you had calmed again. You were okay, dozing. But, one thing had changed; can you guess what that was?”

Judy shook her head.

“That cover was gone. You’d either shaken it off or had grabbed it and thrown it aside. No protection, and you were not reacting to the fear field.”

He smiled at the widening eyes look she gave him.

“I’m…immune,” she whispered in an amazed tone.

“Yes. Picked up the piece and took you up to level three. There, I reset it on you so that when we came out, the watch camera would see that your head was covered. An explanation as to how you got through without being driven insane by the field. Once out, I turned to one side so the camera got a clear shot of the covering, put you down, then removed it.”

Pause.

“But…why?” the bunny asked.

“You were, are, the first one recovered from the ‘plex. Unaged, for some reason. Hopefully with some, or more, knowledge of what had happened down there. You had enough on your plate without that additional part being loaded on as well,” Nick explained.

Judith was silent, her mind grappling with this new information.

“It might help if you closed your eyes. Then I could lead you around in random directions to eventually take you in without your knowing it,” Nick offered.

It was tempting…

“No. You’ve told me that I’m immune. I have zero reason to believe that you would tell me that if it were not true. So, I go in, eyes open,” Judy said.

Nick lifted up both of her paws and then kissed one, then the other.

“Thank you,” he said, with a tone of warm pride.

On the computer screen, the camera’s view showed the pair turn to the ‘shed’ entrance and then, paw in paw, fox and rabbit walked to it then went inside. They disappeared down the stairwell entrance.

“So, that’s what it was. Well played, Nicholas, damn well played,” Bogo said.

Chapter Text

Chapter 16: Supply Movement, Bathrooms, Wash, and “Oh!”

As they approached the entrance, Nick felt Judy’s hold on his paw slowly tightening up.

“It’s one thing to be told you’re immune to the fear field’s effect but until you actually prove it to yourself…” he thought as he gave what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze to her paw.

Once inside, her hold relaxed. To, then down the stairs they went to stop at the landing to Level One. In the very dim light, Nick activated a couple of chem light sticks (green) and hung one on his vest and another on a ring on the front of Judy’s.

“The white light sticks are nice but tend to be shorter lived,” he explained.

The tod picked up a rabbit sized backpack and settled it onto Judy’s shoulders. He instructed her on tightening it down to her body so that it was comfortable for her. Next, he showed her how to do a fast drop of the pack then had her practice that a few times.

“While I’m hoping we won’t run into any problems down here, there’s always the possibility that we might have to lighten up fast in order to haul tail fast,” he said.

There was a two-quart water bladder in her pack that Judy could drink from with Nick’s being a two and a half quart. After descending to Level Six, they took their packs off and began moving stuff down to lower levels. They moved the material down in stages, four levels at a time. In the process…

“Ahh, Nick.”

“Yup?”

“Wha…what do you do about…about going to the…bathroom?” Judy asked.

“No problem. Just go to the communal use bathroom of the level we’re on and do your thing,” he said as he checked through items in a box he’d opened.

After a few seconds hesitation, she left. Nick smiled.

“Wonder what she’ll think?” he mused.

About ten minutes later, she returned.

“There’s toilet paper in there,” she said, a note of amazement in her voice.

“Of course there is. What do you think I am, a barbarian?” the tod said.

“And there’s water in most of the bowls,” she added.

“That too.”

Judy looked at Nick.

“Being a little generous…free with your water supply, aren’t you?”

“Not really. When I need to bathe down here I use a wash suit. Heat about a quart of water with a chemical heater unit while getting undressed, slip into the suit and seal it mostly shut. Check your water temperature to be sure it’s right, make adjustments as needed, then pour it inside the suit. Add a bit of no tears soap powder and then finish sealing it up. Roll around on the floor, do some sit-ups, some jogging in place for agitation, and another set of rolls on the floor and you’re pretty much done. Drain the suit, pour in another quart, and do the same ‘exercises’ to rinse yourself out…”

“Then you dump the used water into the toilet bowls, thus not allowing it to go to waste,” Judy completed.

“You got it,” he said. “Same goes with the clothing wash and rinse bags we’ll be using.”

Two days later:

“Wow, it does work pretty well,” Judy thought as she toweled off the front of her body while Nick worked at drying her back.

Nick, down to his fur, had demonstrated the whole wash suit procedure to her. Under other circumstances she would have been a little uncomfortable in the presence of a nude male but her trust in him superseded that. After he did his wash and rinse, she helped dry him off. While the ambient temperature was in the mid-60s almost constantly down here, that was still cool enough that one did not want to have heat conducting water draining their body heat into the air any longer than necessary. Once dry, she helped groom his fur, with a particular fascination with that fluffy tail of his. He dressed in clean clothing and then it was her turn. She followed his lead and, in about six minutes, she was done. The dry off followed and assisted grooming, then her own clean clothing. Then they used the wash bags. With these, they put in the clothing to be done, sealed them most of the way up, added the soap and a little less than a quart of water, completed the seal, then rolled, squished, and lightly pounded on the bag to agitate the water within. Same thing done to rinse them out. A run through a two roller clothes wringer to get most to the water out, then hang them up to dry.

“Normally I wait until I’ve got three to four sets of clothing to do but I wanted you to see how this worked.”

“Huff, gives me some appreciation for what my grandmother had to go through in doing wash,” Judy said.

As they descended to the lower levels, Judy was amazed at the number of big (“225 gallons, each” Nick told her) containers on most of the first 15 levels. She counted a total of 64 of them.

“Water is almost always the biggest supply problem. It’s heavy, 8.3 pounds per gallon, and bulky in its own right. I’d been stocking up for months before I found you,” he explained.

It was on their ninth day that they got down to Level 23.

“We take it slow,” Nick said. “I didn’t clear the whole level because I wanted to get you to the surface as quickly as I could.”

They did. Looking into each room they came to to confirm that there was no one nor anything of interest, or threat, in each. Then, about two-thirds of the way down, Judy came to telephone station 2309 and just stood there, looking at it.

“Hard to think that I made that call so long ago while I stand here looking at it,” she thought.

“Has it been disturbed in any way?" Nick asked her.

“No, no. As far as I can remember it’s just like I left it,” she answered.

“We’ll get a batch of photos to confirm everything for Kay and Roy,” Nick said as he slipped out of his pack and set it on the floor.

Tripod and camera came out and were set up. He used a tape measure to get the distance from lens to hand set right and an angle gauge to get the degrees of angle for each shot. Next, he pulled out his flashgun, loaded a capsule in it, stuck a pin through a hole that led to that capsule, then primed the pan with some loose powder.

“Turn your head away and close your eyes,” he instructed as he opened the camera shudder.

She did and a couple of seconds later, jumped just a little at the “”foof!” sound and the sudden flash of light that made its way through her closed eyelids. Nick took 31 shots of the station, recording each one’s angle(s) and distance in his logbook. That done, they traveled further down the corridor. Nick stopped again, checked the wall (which had a mark on it), then looked about.

“I found you here,” he said.

“There’s nothing left of the cocoon,” Judy observed.

“Or the material that attached it to the ceiling, floor, and one wall,” Nick added.

She saw him look down the corridor in the direction of the exit she had meant to use for her escape loo this many years before.

“Fluff, do me a favor.”

“What?”

“Get down on your hands and knees by the wall at that point,” he said, indicating the spot where the cocoon had once been.

She did.

“Now, face down towards the floor and close your eyes. Keep them closed until I say otherwise.”

Once more, she did as asked. Over the next few minutes her ears picked up various sounds: fox movements, the ever so faint noise of something brushing over something, then the snap sound of a chem light being activated followed by it being shaken to fully ‘wake it up’. Sound of tape pulled out of then ripped from a roll. Nick lit off 15 chem sticks, from the sound of things.

“What is he doing that requires so much light?” she thought.

Her ears moved a little at the sound of his returning to her. He stopped close behind her.

“Alright, keeping your head down, open your eyes,” he directed.

She did and could clearly make out the joins of the floor tiles. Nick had used white light sticks, something he seldom did.

“Is this about the level of lighting just before you got grabbed?”

“Pretty close, I think,” she answered.

“Alright. Like our original reenactment, I’m going to grab you and bring you up in front of me. There’s no need to claw or kick, all I want you to do is look straight forwards,” she heard him say.

“Understood.”

“On the mark, three, two, one, MARK!”

An instant later, Judy was up and looking down the corridor…to see the two-foot-wide by six-foot-long grooming mirror attached to the wall barely fifteen feet in front of her. A very big ‘light’ pinged on in her head.

“Oh,” she breathed.

“That’s how you knew it had four arms and where they were positioned,” Nick said as he set the bunny on her feet on the floor. “You don’t remember anything else, well, maybe the lead legs, because the central body of the alien was pretty much blocked by your own body. And once your panic kicked in…”

“I didn’t get to see anymore because of my struggling,” Judy finished.

“That’s what I figure,” he replied.

They both looked at the door off to the right of that mirror. Both wondering what the next lower level would be like.

“Alright, we set up at least one supply cache on this level before we proceed,” Nick said.

Chapter Text

Chapter 17: Value of Silence

It was an unhurried event, the bunny’s resurfacing into the waking world. She was quite comfortable and in no rush to get all of the way out of her dreamless sleep. Still, old habits, routines, held and Judy’s senses came online as she roused. First and foremost, was the scent of fox musk in her nose. Not far behind that was the feel of being snugged up against a hard muscled body with a cushioning layer of fur. Add in that there was an arm over her in a securing (and claiming?) gesture that made the doe feel secure in ways that she had not been in who knows how long…

“Nope, not going to disturb this, not yet,” she thought.

So, her mind was allowed to wander about on its own. She and Nick were sacked out on Level 29. They had spent the last two weeks ‘clearing’ (exploring/investigating) the five intervening levels plus this one. As with the previous 23, there was no sign of any bodies nor of any violent activity.

“It’s like everyone just got up and left in an orderly, unhurried manner,” she had observed.

“So it appears,” her vulpine partner replied.

Once a level was checked out, they set up a series of small supply caches scattered out among several rooms and, even, behind some air duct grates.

“Avoid storing everything in one place. Usually that’s a disaster waiting to happen. Losing all of that in one shot is not good for one’s continued survival,” Nick told her.

To be honest, if it were not for her personal encounter with the alien, Judy would have regarded the ‘clearing’ procedure as pretty boring.

“In the military they call it ‘the deadly grind’,” Nick told her. “The deadly part comes in when one gets so used to it that they get careless, even a touch arrogant. If they’re lucky, the ones who get that way get a rough reminder from their fellows not to. Those who aren’t or don’t take heed…”

Up to this time, the two of them slept separately. But as they got closer to Level 30 Judy decided that she wanted that to change.

“I’d feel a little better if I were close to you,” she told Nick.

“Not worried that I might take advantage of the situation?” he asked.

“You stayed with me in the same bed, holding me close those first several days, I’m told. I feel that that was the case. Then there’s the night I asked you to stay with me when I knew that nightmare was going to haunt me again. Ample time and opportunity to have taken advantage of me if you chose to. Did you?”

A head shake from her fox.

“Then I am pretty confident that you won’t…”

She grinned in a wicked manner.

“…unless you receive some real…’encouragement’,” she finished with a raised eyebrow and a wide grin.

“Whew, you really are going to test an old fox’s meddle, aren’t you?” he said in reply.

Thusly, for the last nine ‘nights’ (as measured by the spring ran watches they had) fox and rabbit slept snugged up to one another. For Judy, it was a better sleep than she had when doing so by herself. It wasn’t like the sleep piles with her sibs and even friends but it was equally, or more, restful and satisfying.

“Which should tell you something,” her mind voice said.

Cuddled up together, they talked about things; plans for the next day, speculations on what was going on with this, that, or the other. Last night’s chat had been a particularly interesting one.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

As tomorrow was to be a big day, the two of them had bathed in their wash suits (using a whole gallon, for each, of water vs. the usual two quarts). Once dry, they assist groomed one another, donned some clean underwear, boxers for Nick, panties for Judy, and then laid down on the big air mattress to draw the cover over them.

“So, you get to see your old lab cavern for the first time in six decades plus. What do you think you’ll see?” Nick asked.

“Honest answer; I have no idea. What do I hope to see? I find myself torn between two possibilities; one is, nothing. No portal, or portals, open, nothing else…undue, for lack of a better term. That would smooth out a lot of things and sooth the nerves of more than a few mammals,” she answered.

“Two, there’s the other side of you, the scientist one, that hopes to see confirmation of your work,” Nick put in.

Judy gave him an odd look, one that was a mix of hopefulness and concern.

“Is it so wrong for me to think that? Especially considering what we know, correction, believe we know happened as a result,” she replied.

Wilde shook his head.

“No. I don’t think it is. You are a scientist, working towards a goal. Making scientific finds is what you’re about. You had 15 failures so it is understandable that you’d like to see at least some…’visible’ sign of success to make all of that work worthwhile,” he said, tracing a fingertip along her lower jaw line. “Either way, we should know by the end of tomorrow, likely sooner.”

Pressed up against the tod’s front, Judy felt that hard muscled wall loosen up as he relaxed. The feel of that brought something to mind.

“Nick, would you mind answering something for me?” she asked.

“Sure, if I can.”

“I’ve noticed something; when you were with me the night of my nightmare and I was over it. You slept but you weren’t…really…”

“All the way asleep? Not in deep sleep?” he provided.

“Yes, that’s it. And it was the same on the next night when I asked you to be there in case I got a repeat.”

“Okay, I’m a light sleeper. Goes with the life I’ve led over about a dozen years,” Nick said.

“Life as in that of the world traveler, the smuggler, and/or something else?”

“A fair bit of the first two but a lot of the third.”

His eyes took an unfocused look for several seconds, then sharpened once again.

“I spent, off and on, several years rescuing mammals who, through no fault of their own, were caught up in bad situations. That means working in places where you not only blend in, you, also, ‘sleep with one eye open’, as the saying goes. You’re in the middle, deep in, in some cases, of hostile territory and being a heavy sleeper leaves one open and vulnerable there. So, light sleeping is a requirement. A habit that sticks with you after you’ve done enough of it.”

“Alright, I accept that. But, down here, in the sleep time we’ve done together, things are different. Here, habit or no, you sleep like that mythical ‘log’ so many refer to. What’s the difference?”

Judy watched an expression of contemplation come to Nick’s face for several seconds, then his arms tightened around her.

“Yeep!” she squeaked as he rolled onto his back and stopped.

This left her lying belly down on him. Taking his arms away, Nick tucked his hands behind his head and looked up at her, in deep thought. Finally...

“A year and a half ago, I made a serious mistake. Bad enough that it was on the edge of getting me killed but made worse by the fact that it could have gotten two others seriously hurt, if not killed as well. I improvised on the spot and managed to get out of the situation, along with my two charges. When they were in safety, I took a hard look at myself and didn’t like what I ‘saw’, I’d had so many successes that I’d become arrogant, careless, sloppy. I needed a break, to rest and sort things out. So, I eased myself back into the States and looked for some place to hole up and think things over. I wanted to be someplace well away from most mammals so I looked for jobs out, waaay out in the ‘sticks’. One of the possibilities was the guard mammal job out on the range. Put in for it and was accepted in a matter of days. They briefed me, gave me some training, then ‘parked’ me out there. I believe Kay filled you in on what happened afterwards.”

“That she did,” Judy answered.

“When I got going in my exploration of this place I realized something; I’m the only one who can get inside. Ergo, no one could be a threat to me while I was in here. All of a sudden, that need to sleep light was gone, I could sleep as deeply as I wanted.”

“And you did,” the doe said.

“Like the log, stone, and a graveyard full of dead. Really, it was the best sleep I’d had since my days as a kit. It was great! I realized that part, a big part, of my problem was that I was burning out from the stress of what I had been doing. Of course, when I was back on the surface light sleep mode was back on.”

“How could you sleep so well with the possibility of one or more entities...aliens around?” Judith asked.

“I didn’t get into deep sleep until after I checked out the first ten levels. Nothing and no one anywhere. So, I think my subconscious decided that “if there isn’t anything by now, there isn’t going to be”. That’s when I started sleeping deep.”

Nick shifted his eyes to where he looked up at the ceiling.

“And down here, I was able to do some real thinking, contemplation away from it all.”

“Meaning?” Judy prompted.

Pause.

“Fluff, most of everything in the present day world is a distraction or meant to be one. Smartphones, computers, electronic tablets, music and video players, to name a very few. And, there is no privacy there. No matter where you are, someone or something is watching you in one manner or another. Even those who go into the world’s lonely places still have recon and commercial video satellites looking down on them, maybe even following them. Add in remotely controlled, and even autonomous drones….”

“But, down here, one part of that doesn’t work and the other can’t see or listen in,” the bunny ‘saw’.

“Right. It’s even better in that I sat in on a talk where they had been trying to ‘see’ the complex with satellite ground penetrating radar for the last 30 some years. No luck, it hits the field and stops dead it its tracks. Same thing happens when they fired laser beams into the ‘shed’ as well as radar. A couple of our energy physics types tried a little experiment. They assembled a box that had a little cylinder and a sleeve of U-235. Not highly refined stuff but enough so that with the tight tolerances they set up that after passing the cylinder through that sleeve a few dozen times the reaction should cause them to heat and discolor and warp a bit. They had some radiation detectors set up outside of the ‘shed’ to pick up the radiation bursts that should happen with each pass through. There was a thin metal rod sticking out of the top of the box that was part of the rod that held the piece to be moved so they could see if it was working or not. Slid their box into the shed proper, pulled on the string to the lever that was to activate the mechanism to move that cylinder and waited.”

Emerald eyes returned to look into amethyst ones.

“Care to guess what the results were?” he asked.

“With what I know, I’d hazard that they got nothing,” was Judy’s answer.

“You’d hazard right. The field damped, stopped, prevented, whatever you care to call it, the least bit of fission reaction. They tried a much more enriched set of pieces a few days later and got the same lack of results. On that basis, they hypothesized that if an atomic bomb were set off above the ‘plex that any part of the fireball, and other resulting effects, to make it through the ground would be neutralized, stopped, at the edge of the field. If they are right…”

“Then, then that makes here the safest place to be if any atomics get thrown around,” Judy said.

“You got it. Also means that any idea that they may have had of getting me to haul in some small atomics to try to blow this place is a nonstarter, even without my refusal.”

He stopped for a few heartbeats.

“Here, a mammal lucky enough to make it in, is their own person, free of the world’s distractions and prying ‘eyes’. Here, there is quiet, silence. And in that I have meditated, slept well, written down my thoughts…”

He grinned.

“I’ve even sang out loud from time to time.”

“You have? Think I’d like to hear that someday.”

“Only if you want to indulge any masochistic tendencies you may have,” he said with a rueful expression on his face.

Lifting his left arm, the tod looked at the watch on his wrist.

“Time for sleep, fluff tail. We want to be rested for the big day,” he said as he brought an arm over her to hold the bunny in place.

Nick rolled onto his side and rearranged the cover over them. Judy snuggled in close and a moment later both entered sleep…deep sleep.

Chapter Text

Chapter 18: Wonders

In the green glow, the fox and rabbit made out the three-foot-high “30” painted on the door before them. Nick handed his glow light to Judy then grasped the door handle, knelt down, and put one eye at the joint edge where door and frame met, preparing to crack the door ajar. Judy tucked Nick’s glow stick in a pocket then did the same with her own. With that, Nick, ever so slowly, eased the door open. A faint line…

“What? Light?!” Judy thought incredulously. “H…How can that be?!”

The complex had had no power to it for 60 some years. Their glow sticks had been, and should be, the only light available. So what could be making light on the other side of the door?

A couple of hours earlier:

“Up and at ‘um, sunny ears. Time to get going,” Nick said as he traced a fingertip about the base of one of Judy’s ears.

“Mmmmm, come on, ten more minutes,” she mumbled as she snuggled further into him.

“Nope, we do any of that we won’t be getting anywhere,” he said, tossing off the cover.

“Spoilsport!” she grumbled as she sat up and stretched.

“Afraid so,” the fox said as he stood and did his own stretching.

After a mutual grooming, they dressed, had a light meal, and then checked out their gear and packs. As they did…

“Fluff, got a question for you?”

“And it is?”

“Before that 16th try to open the portal, you said your team got an inspiration that led to a much lower power requirement to do it. What was it?” Nick asked.

Judy stopped the check of her pack. That “I’m thinking” look came to her face for a few seconds, then, she turned and sat with her back against the wall.

“After our 15th attempt we did the usual follow-up checks, evaluating the data, checking for anything new….”

“New?” Nick asked.

“Each time we…’hammered the wall’ the action caused a set of resonances, echoes, if you will, revealing something, at times, more than one thing. It…they were always small, faint, subtle things that one needed to look for very carefully in order to spot them. With each…’hit’, each increase in the power, we turned up more and more of those bits while helping to confirm and clarify those we knew about. All of it was interesting, intriguing…”

“But it wasn’t getting you any closer to your main goal,” Wilde said, filling in her following silence.

“No, at the time, it wasn’t.”

“At the time?”

Pause.

“After the evaluation, Prof. Bronson ordered us to take a break for several days. We could work on something, anything, else or just ‘veg’, as you say today, but not anything on the project. So, I spent some time in one of the cafeterias indulging in a bit more comfort food than usual.”

“Really?” Nick snarked, his eyes going to Judy’s hips.

“Plenty of time to work it off in the gym, you evil minded vulpine!” she shot back.

“Well, my mom always said that bunny does had hips meant for breeding,” the tod said with a grin.

“Your mother needs to mind her own darned business!” Judy groused, her own mother’s well ‘padded’ figure coming to mind.

“Alright, you’re in the cafeteria, drowning your sorrows,” Nick prompted.

Judy gave the fox a daggered look.

“One of these days, fox boy, one of these days,” she said, threat quite clear.

“I’m aquiver in anticipation!” he said, rubbing his paws together. “Back to your ‘tale’.”

“While I was…indulging, I overheard a conversation between a couple of maintenance types at the next table. They were discussing our project and, more to the point, what they thought was the matter with it.”

Many, many, many, many Moons ago:

“So, you don’t think they are going to get it done,” said one.

“Nope, not with the approach they’re using,” answered the other.

“Too much power needed?”

“I’m no math whiz but I’m willing to bet a year’s pay that, using their method, it will take over half the power generated in all of the States to have any real chance of success.”

“And they’re not going to get that.”

“Nope.”

“So, what’s your solution?”

“Look, a few of my relatives are in the precious gem business, a couple of them as cutters. They don’t take a rough gem and try to shape it with a three-pound hammer. Instead, they examine it, look for the fault and flaw lines in it and once they’ve mapped those out the work of rough shaping the stone begins. And, instead of a big hammer, they use a set of fine edged wedges, chisels, if you will, and place one at one of those lines and then give it a tap with a hammer that might weigh a few ounces, at the most.”

“So, with a minimum of force, very directed force, they chip the unwanted parts off to get to the stone they want.”

“You got it. I think it’s pretty much the same in this case. We hear them talking about ‘fracturing’ the continuum, so…”

“Maybe you should suggest that to them.”

“Yeah, right. When’s the time that any of the eggheads and whizzes paid attention to anything we low life maintenance types had to say. Especially a fox?”

Back to present day:

“I take it that, after hearing that, you violated Prof. Bronson’s veg out edict?” Nick said.

“With a vengeance!” Judy declared. “The…details of that conversation made so many things suddenly fall into place! He was right about the fault lines. We just hadn’t ‘seen’ them that way. I worked for two straight days and nights. Re-evaluating everything we had. Prof. Bronson figured I was up to something and came to see me. He began admonishing me for working on the project…until he saw the blackboard I’d been working things out on.”

“And everything else went by the wayside.”

“Not quite, he insisted I get at least eight hours of sleep before he called everyone else in. I needed it. Next day, we presented our ideas and findings and, as the old saying goes, it was ‘off to the races’ in a big way.”

She shook her head a couple of times, as if to clear it.

“We get back topside; I need to have a search done for him. Can’t be too many maintenance red foxes with relatives in the gem cutting field,” she said.

“Credit, or blame, where it’s due?” Nick asked.

The doe nodded.

“It may take some time for it to come to light but it should still be given,” Judy said.

She saw the odd thoughtful expression cross Nick’s face.

“Okay, what’s that sneaky mind of yours working on now?” she asked.

“Judy, how many members were there on your team?”

“Thirty-one, counting Prof. Bronson and myself.”

“And how long were you in the complex by the time you overheard that back and forth?”

“Hmmmm, about ten months.”

“So, all of you have been on site more than long enough for any operations and maintenance mammals to know who you are,” Nick pointed out.

Judy nodded.

“As such, knowing that your team is getting nowhere with their present course of action and might be looking for a new one, he arranges to be within easy earshot of….”

He stopped as the expression of realization flashed onto Judy’s face.

“Why that…no good, sneaky, low down, crafty….”

Nick leapt to his feet, reached up with one paw to grab that invisible hat off of his head, and executed one of his graceful sweeping bows to her.

“In his stead, I accept your compliments in all the gracious and sincere spirit you present them!” he said, bobbing his eyebrows at her.

She threw a chem light stick at him, which he fielded, easily, with one hand.

“He’s probably one of your relatives!” she stated.

“Whether he is or isn’t, I’ll claim him with all due reverence,” the vulpine replied.

Nick was finishing zipping up his pack and about to cinch up its tightening straps when he heard a heavy sigh. Looking its way, he saw the look of…concern on Judy’s face.

“What is it, Fluff?”

“I wish I’d been able to send a message to Sharla. She doesn’t hear from us for a long time she’s going to get worried,” Judy said.

“Well, I didn’t give you a lot of time to think of that, as I recall,” Nick said. “But, if you’ll hold that thought for a min.”

With that, he undid the front of his vest, unzipped one of the inside pockets, and pulled out a folded Ziploc bag. Unfolding that bag, he unzipped it, and the second one inside of it, and extracted a couple of # 10 sized mailing envelopes.

“Here you go,” he said, handing them to the rabbit. “Used a private, secure courier service to minimize a trail.”

The foremost one was slit open along the top.

“To: Sharla Gibson and Sheela Woolverson”
“From: Nicholas P. Wilde” was in the addressing blocks.

Slipping out the page within, Judy unfolded it and read.

“Letting the pair of ewe…”

The bunny groaned at the pun.

“…know that Jude and I…”

“Whap!”

“OWW!” the fox yelped at the stinging smack on his upper right arm.

“Only my Dad, fox boy! When are you going to learn?!” Judy declared.

“…will be out of touch for quite some time. Months, maybe close to a year, plus. Don’t fret, we have every intension of resurfacing.”

Below that were two sets of hand written in lines.

“Rattle this ole world, you two! Rattle it good!!
Sharla
PS: Don’t forget to send me a wedding invitation!”

“Be sure you do come back. I want to do a thesis on positive chaos generators and I’d hate to lose the only two working examples I know of!
Sheela
PS: I’ll take one of those wedding invites as well.”

Judy shook her head in amusement as she tucked the letter back into its envelope. Then, she ‘paged’ to the other one. The ‘To’ part read “Cordell Madis”. It was slit on the postage end. Judy gave Nick a questioning look.

“Go ahead, read it,” he said.

She extracted the letter and unfolded it. The message to the badger was similar (Judy managed to refrain from smacking her fox, again, at the ‘Jude’ word) to the one for Sharla and Sheela. The written reply was pure Cordell.

“You will hear the Music. Go to it. Embrace it. And ride it for all its worth, and more.”

Judy canted her eyes up to Nick. He just held up his paws in a sign of ‘surrender’.

The trek down the stairwell was longer than the previous 29 levels; instead of the usual 30 feet, this set of stairs went for 90. Once on the door landing, they went into their ‘first entry’ routine. That faint thin band of blue/green light that bisected Nick’s face was the last thing Judy had ever expected to see. As such, it put her on edge.

“No movement. Only part of corridor in view and what looks like an equipment bank at the end of it,” the fox whispered. “Light is coming from beyond that equipment bank.”

He opened the door all of the way, then wedged it so it stayed that way. Looking to his partner, Nick saw her ears up and doing little side to side search movements, then they stopped.

“You hear it, don’t you,” he said.

“Yes, faint but…what is it?” she said.

“We’ll find out,” the tod replied.

Glow sticks stashed away, they eased their way down the short passageway to its end. The sound became clearer in Judy’s ears as they approached. It was soft, pleasant, beautiful!

“Like the legendary Sirens’ song,” her inner voice said.

At the edge of the equipment rack, she peeped around…and almost wished she hadn’t.

“Overpowered side effect confirmed!” she thought.

As her eyes scanned around the cavern space before her she quickly lost count…

“If anything, I underestimated things, badly,” Judy mentally added.

“No movement and no scents, other than us. I believe we’re the only ones here,” Nick said. “How about you?”

Judy made another slow sweep with her ears.

“Nothing other than that…music,” she said.

Odd, she had thought that that would interfere with her hearing but it seemed that it did not. She had no problem hearing Nick’s soft whisperings through it. Standing clear of the equipment with a full view of the 200 plus foot open cavern, that faint, almost rippling, light coming from each portal. She began a slow and careful count.

“I count…147 of them,” Nick said.

“Same here,” said Judy.

She recorded the count in a notebook, plus the three main shapes that most of them took. Then Nick saw her walk over to a low (about two and a half-foot-high) control board, and begin searching about.

“What are you looking for?” he asked.

“Prof. Bronson’s lab logbook. He always had it on paw when an experiment was running,” Judy said as she went down to look around on the floor. “Likely it got knocked off, maybe kicked around, in the panic.”

She cursed the dim lighting under her breath.

“I’d trade half of my new hearing for a real boost in my night vision!” she stated.

“Then you’d have to wear tinted glasses or contacts almost all of the time,” Nick said as he joined her in the search.

He spotted something at the edge of a nearby electronics bank and picked it up.

“This it?” he asked as he held it out to Judy.

Snagging the book, the rabbit laid it on one console, set out two activated glow sticks, one on either side of it, then opened the volume up. She paged through until…

“Here it is,” and read out aloud.

11 November, 1958: 1403 hrs. local time

Equipment set up and calibrated to new settings. Power coming up and we’ll see if we can form our portal. Sent Judith off to get a piece of equipment that Grayson forgot to bring. Digits crossed that we’ve got it right this time.”

1408 hrs. local time

SUCCESS!! The portal has formed almost in the center of the cavern! It’s not circular in shape. More like a 15-foot-high by 25 plus foot long rectangle with the ends being crescent shaped.

1410 hrs. local time

Five other portals have appeared. Size and shapes similar to the first one.

1411 hrs. local time

Three more portals have appeared. We are shutting down power.

1414 hrs. local time

Power is off but portals continue to form. Judith, we all, especially myself, owe you apologies for doubting you.

1417 hrs. local time

The count is 46 now. There’s some kind of commotion going on, sounds of mammals yelling, even crying out.

1418

Some 20 to 30 mammals have come rushing into the cavern; yelling, screaming, some saying we’re being invaded. Oh Maker! Three just ran into one of the portals and are gone!

1419

I think a few more portals have formed. More mammals coming out of the lower level(s?). They are panicked, more running into various portals. Others trying to hide behind equipment and…

“It ends there,” Judy said, closing up the book.

She looked to Nick.

“What now?” she asked. “Go back to the surface to let them know?”

The fox shook his head.

“Not right now. We go down to the other lower levels and get a full count,” he said.

“A full count? Of what?” she asked.

She saw him look out into the cavern, scanning over those portals.

“Fluff, with this and what the Chief told me after you dropped your tactical atomic on his desk, this…”

He waved a paw to the portals.

“Is going to be almost nothing compared to what is down below.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 19: Into the Unknown/Embracing the Music

The ‘song’ sang ever so soft in the bunny’s ears. Sitting at the edge of the great cavern, it came to her from a 160 some degree arc before her. Judy sat in a chair that had not been occupied in decades. She’d been there she knew not how long. One hand held a paper. At the bottom of it was a number and, over that indeterminate amount of time, the rabbit had looked at it now and then. An unreasoning, blindly hopeful part of her wanted…BEGGED for it to be different, to be less, a lot less. Judy looked at it again.

“17,977,” it read.

It had not changed. She looked back out into the cavern. Judy estimated that it, Level 38, was great enough to hold almost a tenth of her 1958 Bunnyburrow. Like levels 30-37 all the equipment was set up at the edge and at mostly one side, leaving the rest of the space open. In that space shimmered the dim translucent light of a few thousand open portals.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

“Hold out your paw,” Nick directed.

Judy did and he dropped several small foil packets into it. Each contained two tablets of headache medicine.

“And these are for?” she asked.

“Just getting ahead of the ‘game’, as it were,” was the reply.

They had completed their establishment of a pair of supply caches on Level 30 and were preparing to delve even further downwards. Seated in a couple of chairs close to the stairwell, they were, as per their routine, going over their packs and gear. Nick’s handing her those meds did not bode well.

“Judy, what do you know of any levels below us?” he asked.

“Next to nothing. We know of two others and believed there were a couple of more and that was about it,” she said.

“Well, for your info, there are eight levels below this one.”

“Eight!”

“Yup. Most of them had their own projects going but all had the gear for your project.”

“All of them? Why?”

“Your project had top priority. Reasoning being that by getting one, or more, portals opened to one or more parallel Terras would be a way to move, evacuate enough mammals to it, or them, to assure species and cultural survival in case of an all-out atomic war.”

“Presuming that one or more of those worlds had no intelligent life on them to contest our being there,” Judy said.

“True that, though by the ‘numbers', if they got three or more gates to those different worlds there would be a very good chance that at least one of them would not have sentient life on it. Thus the other scientists and techs doing small alterations on your setups to not only see if they might succeed where you hadn’t but to get access to different Terras as well.”

“So, every time we tried…”

“One or more of them were doing so as well. Of course, the more power you required, the fewer levels that could try something different. Your last one had only one other level doing it.”

“How…where did they get the power from?!” Judy asked.

“Remember the big power blackout that happened, the one that effected large parts of three states?”

“That…That was us, and them?!”

Nick nodded.

“When your team came up with the solution that cut the power demands way down…”

A chill ran through the bunny’s form.

“One, or more of the others did it, as well.”

“Try all of them,” Nick said.

Judy was stunned speechless for almost a minute.

“You mean to tell me that there are, very likely, eight more levels with 140 some portals open on each?” she finally responded.

He was silent for several seconds.

“I only wish it was that simple,” he said, at last.

“’that simple’? What are you…”

Her mind called up something he’d said earlier.

“They did the experiment with one or more changes,” she murmured aloud.

The bunny looked at the fox.

“And those changes were…?”

“Just one,” he said.

“And that was?”

“For each succeeding level, they added about six percent more power on and above what the previous one used. On 38, they used close to 57% of the power you used on your first attempt.”

Judy did nothing for a dozen heartbeats, then, she ripped open two of the packets she held, popped the four tabs into her mouth, and took a long drink of water.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

As per Nick’s habit, they checked a level, established supplies, then moved on downwards. Each new level’s cavern space was larger and each had open portals on it, the number increasing with each level. At Level 34 Judy stopped asking herself “What were they THINKING?!!” as it was an exercise in wasted energy. By level 38, all she wanted to do was get the count done.

“I’m trying to figure out if we are doomed or not,” she thought as she looked about.

Another look at the number on her paper; still unchanged. About the only other thing she knew for certain was that the aliens had not come from the portals on Level 30.

“As quickly as things had ‘developed’, it’s likely they came from one to three levels below 30,” she mused.

That really didn’t help anything, just assuaged her and her team of the responsibility of allowing them in.

“If they had let it just be us to do it,” she thought.

“But that’s not what happened,” her cold Logic reminded. “If it hadn’t….”

Judy looked up to see Nick standing a few feet away, scanning back and forth with slow head sweeps. If it hadn’t happened, Sharla might/would be wasting away in Bunnyburrow instead of shaking up her area of the science world. And he…he would not be with her; they would not be together.

“What do we do now?” Judy asked.

She watched as her fox stood there, head continuing those sweeps. Almost a full minute passed before he answered.

“The way I see it, we’ve got two real courses of action,” he said. “One, is to return to the surface and make our report.”

“Which will scare the mammal pee out of just about everyone who is in on the debrief,” Judy said.

Nick nodded.

“The other?”

The tod held up one hand, signaling for silence. He closed his eyes and she watched as his ears occasionally twitched and cocked this way or that. In the light of the portals, she could see his expression; enigmatic, and…serene(?).

“Nick?”

His eyes remained closed.

“Or, we follow Cordell’s directive,” he said.

It was crazy. Any remotely sane mammal would shy away from it, go back to the surface. Still, that oh so silky siren’s song….

She looked over the cavern.

“So many,” she said. “How do we choose?”

Nick smiled at her decision.

“As it’s your discovery, that is up to you,” he responded.

“I…I was only one of many,” she responded.

“True, but, as far as we know, you’re the only one left. So, you choose.”

Judith stood up and took a long walk out into the cavern with Nick following her. As she walked among the gateways, she was still amazed by the fact that none of them were truly circular in shape. All of them had a kind of ‘squashed down from the top (and bottom?)’ shape that left them more or less flat on their upper and lower sides with outwardly curved sides. Some others took an almost rectangular shape. The small ones were some 14 to 15 feet in width while the bigger ones went up to 70 some. Looked at edge on, you could see nothing of the portal. But, both of the broad sides looked the same.

“Do both sides lead to the same world, or does one lead to one and the other to another world?” Judy thought. “So much we don’t know…yet.”

She came to a stop, looked around, then, closed her eyes.

“Nick, turn me around and this way and that several times.”

He went to the bunny, took her shoulders in his paws, then turned her around twice one way, once almost a full turn back the other way, then about a third of a turn more. Then he stepped back.

“I’m done,” he told her.

The rabbit made a few partial turns, then almost a full one. She raised her left arm straight out from her side with the top pair of fingers extended out. Then, that arm swung forward to stop at about 45 degrees between her side and front.

“There,” she said, eyes still closed.

Nick came back to her, knelt, and sighted along the top of her arm and those outstretched fingers.

“Got it,” he said.

They spent the rest of the ‘day’ checking and arranging the items in their packs and vests, then washed, dried, and groomed. Then, bathed in the light and music of the gateways to thousands of worlds, the pair had the best sleep either had had.

Standing before the portal, they could see the tiny ripples on its surface. There were thin lines, sparks, and small patches of light appearing, shooting about, and then vanishing. It looked beautiful, enticing. Judy turned to face the fox beside her.

“Nick, before we go, would you do something for me?” she asked.

“Sure. What is it?”

“Kneel down and then tip your head down.”

He did as she requested. Stretching up on her toes, Judith then placed her chin at the top center of his head and rubbed it side to side several times. She, then, repeated the process on his right shoulder followed by doing so on his left one. Done, she stepped back and waited. Without a word, Nick leaned forward to, first, rub his own chin back and forth on the top of her head, then on her right shoulder and right side of her neck, then repeated things on her left shoulder and neck side. He drew back and regarded her.

“Complete it, please,” she said.

The vulpine tod tipped his head to one side, opened his mouth wide, and then took Judy’s neck into his jaws. The bunny closed her eyes at the feel of his warm moist breath wafting over the fur at her throat. She crooned ever so softly at the feel of the points of his teeth digging into the sides of her neck with just enough force to let her know they were there. They held that position for several seconds, then Nick released her and pulled back. The doe opened her eyes to look into his; it was done. The mismatched pair had claimed one another in rituals specific to their species, rituals that went all of the way back to the beginnings of their unevolved ancestors. Asserted bonds on each other that were, in their ways, more binding and meaningful than any ceremony done in a designated holy place before any chief, priest, or shaman. Their matehood was established. Nick stood, took Judy’s left paw hand in his right, raised it up, and then planted a long lingering kiss on the back of her wrist.

“Such a romantic,” she said in a soft, loving tone.

“And you love me for it,” he said, with an easy smile.

She cocked an eyebrow upwards.

“Do I? Yes. Yes, I do,” she responded.

Still hand in hand, they turned to the portal and looked it over once more.

“Let’s do this,” Judith said with a calm sure voice.

“On the mark! Five, four, three, two, one, MARK!” Nick called out.

They stepped forwards.

Epilogue:

As it had all of his remembered life, the Music sang its soft, pleasant, and tantalizing song to the badger as he slept. Then, there was a small, subtle change; two harmonious notes added themselves to it. In his sleep, Cordell smiled; they’d done it. Fox and rabbit had embraced the Music, and only they would know where and how far it would take them.

Hopefully, not the End.

Chapter Text

Chapter 20: “He Who Knows/Those Who Wait”

“Quite a difference from New Mexxally,” thought Bogo as he drove.

That was expected. Compared to the, mostly, tans and browns he’d lived with for 12 years, the Triburrows sported so much green that it almost made his eyes ache. And unlike the mountains back home, the edges and crags of the ones here were ‘softer’ in appearance. Fields of crops were broken up with meadows and patches of woods and chunks of forest. The place was a herbivore’s dietary paradise and he intended to indulge himself in some of those delights while in Bunnyburrow. Still, sightseeing and sampling the local culinary treats were secondary to his purpose in coming here. Problem was that, unlike any other mission, Allen W. Bogo had no real idea what the primary purpose of this one was.

Almost 16 months; that was how much time had passed since Judith L. Hopps and Nicholas P. Wilde had gone down into the Complex. Their mission; to explore the entire installation and then come back to deliver their report. Known only to himself and Wilde, there was another purpose to that job. It was to get Judith out of ‘harm’s way’ until a life threatening situation was dealt with. The direct threat, in the form of an otter by the name of Coombs, had been eliminated in a…’novel’ manner. Thing was, he had backers; the equipment he had was not something he could access by himself. Even more alarming were two drugs in his possession. One was a voluntary nerve paralyzer, the other capable of destroying a mammal’s intellect. The unexpected (or so it seemed) intervention by Wilde had saved Judy from the second drug. As both drugs were, supposedly, under very tight controls, that the otter had them ‘said’ that he had high powered backers. Investigations were launched and until they were concluded, Bogo suggested that Wilde take Judith Hopps to somewhere secure. That place was the Complex itself (it turned out that the bunny was just as immune to the fear field surrounding the installation as Nick was). Because of the ‘delicacy’ of the situation, those investigations were done as covertly as possible. Due to the fact that there were so few in the ‘chain’ who had the knowledge of what was going on plus the power to access those drugs and the advanced equipment, the Truth, as the saying goes, “will out”. There were two of them. Now the question was what to do next. Bogo wished to deal with them himself. Problem was, he needed a special level of clearance to do so. Chance (or Fate) intervened; the President was doing a swing through the Southwest and requested a meeting with the cape buffalo.

“Chief Bogo, this situation is alarming and complicated at the same time. Normal legal action is not going to work here without a lot of…’things’ coming to light that we would prefer not to,” the lion, Leodore Lionheart said. “Even a secret tribunal has problems.”

He looked the buffalo straight in the eyes.

“Have you a solution?”

“I do, sir.”

“Let’s hear it.”

A few weeks later, the President directed two mammals in the command chain between himself and Bogo to personally go out to the complex to do an onsite inspection. Upon their arrival, Bogo personally took them out.

“For extra security, we’ve not only shut off the site cameras, we’ve hooded them as well,” he explained as they arrived at the ‘Plex.

The elk stag and mountain sheep ewe both acknowledged that with nods as the vehicle came to a stop. Getting out, the Chief slung a good sized messenger bag over one shoulder, then took them on the ‘tour’, not that there was that much to see.

“As unimpressive as the photos,” the ewe said, looking around.

“It’s supposed to be that way,” the elk responded, gazing at, and into, the open end of the ‘shed’. “Who would think that this place held so many secrets, even from us.”

“Yes, Miss Hopps made a similar observation,” Bogo said.

“Any word on her or Mr. Wilde?” asked the ewe.

“To date, nothing,” the buffalo said as he came up behind the pair. “Wilde said he expected that the two of them would be down and exploring for a long time.”

“Let’s hope they make it back. Beyond the full exploration of this installation, we need to do all possible to convince Miss Hopps to allow more biosamples to be taken from her. That rabbit’s body holds a lot of secrets that need to be discovered and researched on their own,” said the sheep fem.

Elk and sheep felt explosions of blinding pain on the sides of their heads. When they came to their senses, they found themselves well and goodly trussed up in yards and yards of duct tape. Even their muzzles were taped shut. They lay belly down on the ground. Though they couldn’t see it, one end of a coil of rope was tied around their ankles.

“You’re both awake, good,” they heard Bogo say. “It’s time to read the charges. There are nine but there’s only one that truly matters. Top of the list; the premeditated first degree murder attempt of one Judith Laverne Hopps. While her ‘death’ would not have been a physical one, at the time, the destruction of her mind is ruled as an equivalent.”

They heard a paper rattle, as if it were being put away.

“As I have been granted sole authority to deal with the two of you, I have decided that your punishment should fit the crime.”

He stood up and looked into the open side of the ‘shed’, barely a few feet away. Bending his knees, he grasped the makeshift tape handles at the backs of the pair, one hand on each, stood, and slung them into the fear field. He clicked a stopwatch and it began a 20 second countdown.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Sitting at a table outside of “Gideon’s Bake Shoppe”, Bogo sipped an iced tea as he watched the local traffic flow by.

“Who’d have thought that Judith’s old school adversary would establish such a successful multigenerational business,” he thought as he looked about.

Even between the noon and evening ‘rushes’ the place had a good amount of customer traffic going. Hares and rabbits were the main part of that but there were other species frequenting the place as well.

“Everyone likes a treat and this place has plenty of those,” the Chief said to himself as he looked at the last bit of spiced apple fritter on his plate.

One good thing that had come out of the Coombs debacle was that his section now reported directly to the President and that all of those communication were “President’s Eyes Only”. As such, Bogo endeavored to keep them as few and as meaningful as possible. He felt the watch on his wrist vibrate, reminding him of his upcoming meeting.

“Time to do this,” he thought as he finished off that bit of baked delight.

The guard at the entrance to Sharla Gibson Woolverson’s property checked the cape buffalo’s IDs and the authorized mammals’ roster. Satisfied, the tigress waved him through.

“The problem with fame of any kind is that there are mammals who want to get near it, be a part of it. Most are an annoyance; some are a decided hazard,” more than a few celebrities said of their own experiences.

Thus there was a 16-foot-high fence surrounding the property with a couple of privacy fences set up around the back yard and to one side of the house. Besides the guard, and her partner, at the gate, there were a couple of others who patrolled the perimeter. The Chief knew this because his agency was footing the bills for all of it. Stopping at the front door, he rang the bell and, seconds later, it opened. Just inside stood a black fleeced ewe 18 years of age who looked him up and down a couple of times.

“Mr. Allen Bogo, I presume,” she said.

“The same,” he replied.

“Follow me.

The ceilings were just high enough that he didn’t need to duck down. They entered a large livingroom that, by its look, had more in common with a data processing center than a private home. A silver fleeced ewe in her upper 80s stood before a blackboard using the chalk in one hand to write in some math symbols. Bogo examined the whole equation.

“Nana Sharla, Mr. Bogo is here,” the teen announced.

“Yes, I know. For one of your mass, Mr. Bogo, you are pretty light on your feet. Not quite as good as Nick Wilde but pretty close in your own right,” the elder ewe said, her attention still on the blackboard.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he replied. “As to Mr. Wilde, he has the advantage of less mass than I. Rather like the exoplanet of the orbit you’re working on.”

“Very good, you know your maths. Nick said to never judge or underestimate you by your ‘rough exterior,” she said in a tone that was a mix of admiration and amusement.

“I do well on recognizing the general pattern that a math ‘chain’ forms but a lot of the specifics tend to get beyond me,” he said.

“Then there are those who leave us all in the dust, like Judith,” Sharla came back.

“Yes, though she is wise enough to want others to review her works for possible errors.”

Sharla scribed in a few more symbols, then put down her chalk and turned to face her guest. After a moment…

“Sheela, go take a 30-minute break…out in the backyard,” Sharla said.

The teen ewe, now seated at a computer station, did a few more taps on her keyboard, then got up and left.

“Sheela’s a dear and I wouldn’t do without her but there are some things that she’s best off not being privy to,” Sharla said.

“Like Judith’s being 88 years old chronologically but 27 years physically?” Bogo said.

She nodded.

“So, oh Chief Buffalo Buns, why are you here?” Sharla asked.

Bogo’s eye arched up at the Wildeisum.

“Did Wilde contact you say, 15 to 16 months ago, about anything?” he asked.

“Yes, he did. Private courier with a message about he and Judy being out of touch for a long time, perhaps a year or more.”

She stopped and waited for a few seconds.

“Again, why are you here?” she asked.

There it was, the unknown priority of his trip.

“Miss Gibson, what I’m about to tell you stays between us. Understood?”

Sharla nodded.

Bogo gave her a very condensed version of things (leaving out the attempt on Judy). Even at that, it took almost 15 minutes to get it done. At the end, Sharla weighed things for a moment or two.

“They’ve been gone so long that you have concerns, even doubts, about their coming back.”

He nodded.

“And what you are looking for, hoping for, is some sign, beyond mere faith, that they are still alive.”

Another nod.

“I’m afraid I can’t give you anything beyond faith,” she said.

She stopped and thought for a couple of heartbeats.

“But, maybe I can direct you to someone who can.”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Bogo was amazed at all of the electronics in the studio.

“You’d think I was in one of the main labs back at the Site!” he thought.

“Cordell Madis?! He’s damned near as hard to get a personal meeting with as the President!” Bogo declared.

“I see you know something about him,” Sharla said.

“I do have some interests outside of my work and music is at the top of the list. Cordell is high on my roster of singers and musicians that I keep up with.”

“And, as such, his music?” questioned Sharla.

He nodded.

“Then you know that he is quite…unusual in what he produces.”

“’Eerie, otherworldly, disturbing, visionary, frightening in some respects’ are some of the definitions used,” Bogo said. “They say it gets ’under your pelt’, but that’s wrong. It gets to one’s being, one’s…’soul’ and shakes it up like little ever has.”

“Very good, you do understand him. Now, do you know that he is close friend to one Nicholas Wilde?”

Pause.

“No, no I didn’t.”

Sharla told the buffalo about their private concert.

“As such, Cordell left us, Sheela, actually, with a way to contact him.”

Sharla got up, went to her back door, and called in her great-great-granddaughter.

“Sheela, dear, I need to see if you can arrange a meeting between Mr. Bogo and Cordell,” she said.

One of the few mammals at Madis’s forested estate led the buffalo into the studio. Bogo was escorted up to the badger where he sat in front of a bank of equipment; keyboards, synthesizers, balancers, compressors, pitch correctors, mixers, etc. with a couple of computers to help control and record. The Chief looked on as the badger, barely a third of his own height, made a series of adjustments. Then, with a nod to himself, looked up to his guest. There was an expression of contemplation on Cordell’s face for several seconds as he took the measure of the cape buffalo.

“Would you please seat yourself, there.” he said, indicating a chair the Chief’s size.

Once settled, the musician stepped up in front of Bogo and looked him in the eyes for maybe a dozen heartbeats.

“Nick says some joking things about his boss, Oh Great Buffaloed One.”

Pause.

“But tells me that you are at your most dangerous when you are quiet. He, also, says that in a bad scrape he’d prefer you at his side than anywhere else.”

Allen wasn’t sure what to say to that.

“Tell me, Chief Bogo, why are you here?”

Sharla’s question, he noted.

“Almost 16 months ago Wilde and Hopps went out on a…long term mission.”

“And they have yet to return,” Madis provided.

Head nod.

“And you are looking for something, anything, that might indicate, hint, as to whether they are still alive.”

Another nod.

“Sharla, and Sheela, are of the opinion that you are the most likely one to have an answer to that question,” Bogo said.

A strange smile, with an equally odd expression, came to the badger’s face.

“The awakened ones ‘see’ more than most other…’mortals’ do,” Cordell said, cryptically.

He turned away, went to a box set on one console, pulled something out, then returned to Bogo.

“I have a favor to ask you.”

“Yes?”

“I’m going to play something to you, and I want you to wear this while I do,” he said as he held out the long strip of black cloth.

“A blindfold."

Cordell nodded.

Accepting the cloth, Bogo put it to his eyes and then tied it into place. He heard Madis walk away, then stop. The start was so faint he almost missed it. Then, it became more apparent; low, haunting, melodic. As it went on, Bogo felt something in it call to him, telling him there were places to go. Places of wonder, and possible danger. Even knowing that, the ‘pull’ of that music bordered on inescapable.

“The legendary ‘Siren’s Song’ that calls one, not to doom, but to other things,” he thought.

Then, the music faded and was gone. There was a strange feeling of…loss(?) at its ending.

“What do you think?” he heard Cordell ask.

“I think that if I hear it a few more times that I’ll want to follow it no matter where it leads,” he answered. “Is it something new you’ve composed?”

Pause.

“I composed that…’tune’ almost 12 years ago. As of now, there are only two other mammals that have ever heard it.”

“Wilde.”

“Yes. And now, you.”

Bogo removed his blindfold and looked to the badger.

“Why haven’t you released this?” he asked.

“Because it is something deeply…personal to me. That, and I don’t have any answers for the questions that those who would hear it will ask,” Cordell said.

“Personal?”

Silence for a few heartbeats.

“Chief Bogo, I have, for as long as I can remember, heard that song every time I sleep. Where, exactly, it comes from, I don’t know. But, I have the impression that it originates in a dark, isolated place where its ‘song’ is heard by no one else, save me.”

The look Bogo had on his face at that ’revelation’ was not the expected “Yeah, you’re crazy.” one. Instead, it was one of thought and…knowledge(?).

“Not ready to measure me up for a straightjacket?” Cordell asked.

“Considering what I’ve…seen, come to know, over the last couple of years I am not in any good position to render any judgement on what you’ve told me,” the Chief said. “Now, can you tell me what this is leading to? How does it…answer my question?”

“Put your blindfold back on.”

Bogo did so.

“This next piece I…modified about 14 months ago,” he heard Madis say.

The start and most of the music was the same as the first ‘tune’. But, towards the end, something changed; one….no, two, new notes were added to it. The buffalo didn’t know why, but there was something…familiar to them. The piece ended and Bogo reached up and removed the blindfold. As he did so, his mind came to a conclusion.

“Your song changed,” he said. “Two notes. Wilde and Hopps are those.”

The musician nodded.

“And they are still there, part of the song. And as long as they are…”

* * * * * * * * * * *

The Chief waited for the others to settle into their respective seats. As there were only three of them, Miss Howlverson, Kay Dillon, and Roy McBride, that didn’t take long.

“I take it that there’s nothing new on the fox and rabbit front,” he inquired.

Three heads shook. They watched as the impassive cape buffalo looked at them for another minute.

“Alright, we continue the watch. Keep cycling the food stuffs in the refrigs., freezers, and cupboards,” he said, at last.

The expressions on Kay and Roy’s face were ones of relief. Miss Howlverson’s was more neutral.

“Any idea as to how much longer we wait?” she asked.

“For however long it takes. A lifetime, if need be,” he said.

Chapter Text

Chapter 21: Return

Near the end of the work day at the Site:

               “Cheep!”

               “Yes, Miss Howlverson?”

               “Chief, you should check the ‘Plex cameras.”

               An icon click and three taps on his keyboard and a split screen (one for each of the two cameras) came up.  He watched for several minutes then shut down the images.

               “Talk about the walking dead!” he thought as he pressed the intercom switch.

               “Miss Howlverson, send for a…”

Bunnyburrow, 16 hours later:

               Sheela Woolerson saw the cheetah as she came to the front gate.

               “Yes?” she said.

               “Sharla Gibson Woolverson or Sheela Woolverson?” the feline asked.

               “I’m Sheela Woolverson,” the 19-year-old ewe said.

               “ID, please.”

               She pulled out her driver’s license and showed it to him.

               “Sign here, please.”

               She signed the paper and he had her hold her license next to it for signature comparison.  Then, the spotted cat handed over an envelope, bid the teen a good day, and departed.  She opened the letter, pulled out and unfolded the sheet of paper, then read it.  Sheela recognized Bogo’s name, then she read the three words that were the body of the message.

               “Grandma Sharla!” the ewe yelled as she dashed for the front door.

Country estate of Cordell Madis, six hours after Bunnyburrow:

               The cheetah repeated the identification procedure that he’d done with Sheela with the badger who stood before him.  Satisfied he had the right mammal, he handed over the missive and departed.  Much like Sheela, Cordell opened the envelope on the spot and read the paper.

               “Well, it’s about time,” he said to himself.

               Though his tone was mildly amused, there was, also, a sense of relief.

Ten days later:

               The electrically powered vehicle slowed to a stop at some 100 yards from the “Shack”.  Bogo got out, then opened the door to the back passenger seat and pulled out a large engineer’s bag to sling over one of his shoulders.  Then, he hauled out a folding lounge chair, his size, and headed for the front of the house.  It was a little after nine in the morning and still cool with a gentle breeze blowing.  Laid out in front was a lounge chair, with its two occupants, and a low table beside it.  Once there, the Chief set his own chair up, unslung his bag to drop it on the ground to one side, and then settled himself onto his chair.  All of this done to produce as little noise as possible.  The quiet lasted for several minutes.

               “Thanks for leaving us to ourselves for so long,” the sunglasses wearing fox said.

               “Remind me to show you the video of you two when you came out of the shed and went to the shack,” Bogo replied in a quiet voice.  “You do know that your tail was dragging in the dirt, right?”

               “Mmmmmm, that explains the dust and sand on the floor and some on the bed,” Nick said.

               Another moment passed in silence.

               “You ever find out…”

               “Yes, there were two of them,” Bogo said.  “They have been dealt with and the only mammal we answer to now is the President himself.”

               A thoughtful pause.

               “So, you want to get started on the debrief?” Nick asked.

               “If you wish.”

               Bogo eyed the dozing bunny laid out on the front of Nick’s lounging form.  A dark brown ‘gloved’ paw came up to lightly caress Judy from her laid back ears to her tail.

               “Got your recorder?”

               A hand went to the bag, opened it, and the big buffalo pulled out the audio visual device.  He activated it then set it on the small table so that it was clear of the ice water pitcher and the couple of glasses set on it.

               “Begin.”

               A few seconds later, Nick started talking.  He glossed over the clearing of levels 23 (though he did explain how they found out that Judy had seen parts of the alien who caught her) through 29, saying that in the whole time doing so they encountered no bodies and nothing out of the ordinary. 

               “That changed when we got to level 30.  Cracked open the door and there was light, dim, faint, soft beyond it,” he said.  “By the way, how did the peer review of Judy’s calculations come out?”

               “The reviewers said she was on the right track but some things were missed.  Not surprising as she still has not caught up on all of the major findings in quantum physics, let alone the smaller ones.  They told us that there were, theoretically, a number, some said 100 plus, of the portals open and that they had a very good chance of staying that way for at least six billion years.”

               “Well, don’t know about their ‘staying power’ but we counted 147 gates on 30 alone.”

               Then, Nick gave the growing numbers of portals they encountered on the next eight levels.

               “Almost 18,000!” Bogo stated in a loud voice.

               Judy half roused and Nick spent a moment caressing her and making soothing sounds for her.  The bunny resettled herself and resumed her doze.  Everything about those actions told Bogo that these two were well and truly a mated pair.

               “That’s right.  And I’ve got a few additional bits to go with that number.     Big one is that each gate/portal has two sides, faces, if you will.  And, on all of them we went through, one side leads to one world and the other one leads to a different one.  We went through 184 of them, doing both sides and not a one, as far as we could tell, led to the same world.”

               Nick and Judy spent two days and nights on the first world they set footpaw on.  It looked, by the flora, like their own home world but there was no sign, in the area they checked, of any sentient life.  They got a number of photos of the plant life and general countryside.  At night, Nick pointed two cameras, set at a hundred yards apart, looking up at the same section of sky and locked the shudders open to record the stars and their movement tracks for several hours (he would do this on all of the worlds they visited).  After returning to the complex, they stepped through the opposite face of the same portal to find themselves on a small (a few square miles big) island.  Using their best binoculars, they could just make out some shoreline many miles away.  That could be seen on a small, about six degrees, arc.  There was nothing but water on the remainder of the 360-degree circle.

               “We stuck to exploring through the gates on level 38 and level 30,” Nick explained.  “Due to a couple of things (he explained about the last entry in Prof. Bronson’s lab logbook) we figured they were the least likely places where we might encounter our eight legged aliens.  We think the gates on levels 31 and 37 are not where they came from, as well.”

               While a greater number of the worlds they went to and gave their cursory, for all intents and purposes, look overs to were, in many ways largely the same in general appearances.

               “The science fiction writers make world exploring sound a lot more exciting than what we encountered.  Still, there were some things that were quite the sight to see,” Wilde said.

               “In what way?” questioned Bogo.

               “Eighteen of them have, as best we could tell, two moons.  Ten have three.  Two have four.  And eleven are either at the edge of one galaxy and there is another one close by or they are in star clusters outside of a major galaxy.”

               Nick turned his head to look at Bogo.

               “Believe me, watching a full blown galaxy rise at night is one heck of an impressive sight!  I’m betting the pictures of them don’t do justice to the real thing!”

               Returning his head to where his nose was pointed skyward once more, the vulpine brought up his free arm and waved his paw towards the house.

               “There’s a refrig. set up beside the front door.  All of the canisters of film we shot are in bags in it.  They are all marked as to which ones got used where and the log notebooks with that information are piled up on the top of the refrig.  There’s a separate stack of notebooks that we recorded our observations in,” he explained.

               A fox grin, along with an expression of amusement, appeared on his face.

               “I’m pretty sure all of that will keep our science mammals busy for some time to come,” he snarked.

               He didn’t say anymore.  The Chief took the moment to ask a question.

               “Have you had any luck finding the device, or devices, that are generating the fear and power damping fields?” he asked.

               If anything, that amused look got even more so.

               “Oh Great Buffaloed One, would you answer a question for me?”

               “If I can.  What is it?”

               Pause.

               “Can you tell me…us, just what a piece of advanced equipment made by an intelligent alien species looks like?” he asked.

               Bogo had no answer to that.

               “In truth, it, they, could look like anything,” he remembered hearing Kay Dillon saying in the breakroom one time.  “With the increasing density of computing material we are doing ourselves, it may, I believe, be possible, in a highly advanced civilization, for such devices to be the size of a regular marble.  Likely, even smaller.”

               “And for it/them to work in the complex they are shielded from the effects of the damping field?” Roy McBride speculated.

               “That, or they draw their power from…for lack of a better term, outside of our universe, proper,” the fennec vixen said.

               “Fueled by dark energy?” Roy asked.

               “That, or something else we don’t know about.”

               “Huff, wouldn’t that be something if they had a ‘battery’ that could keep it/them powered up for centuries, if not eons, or longer!” Roy chuckled.

               “No, I have no idea whatsoever,” Bogo answered.

               Figuring that he had enough for now, Bogo recovered the recorder and put it away.  He had just stood up when…

               “Two other things, Chief,” Nick said.

               “Yes?”

               “Once we are out of the complex and on any of those worlds, our electronic stuff works.”

               A paw went into a shirt pocket and came out with a pair of SD chips.  Nick held them out to Bogo.

               “Photos and videos from our smartphones,” he explained.

               The big ungulate accepted them.

               “And the other thing?” he asked.

               “On 87 of those worlds, on level 38, and eight on level 30, we saw another sign of Judy’s ‘unintended consequences’.”

               “And those were?”

               “The overpowering has produced a kind of cascade effect.”

               “In what way?”

               “On those worlds there were open portals, four on the low end, 14 on the high end, on 38, that lead to other worlds themselves.  We went through a few and found three had still more portals open on them.  Of the ones on level 30, two on three of them and one on each of the rest.”

               Bogo shook his head a couple of times as if to clear it, then went to the house to collect the stuff from the refrigerator.

Chapter Text

Chapter 22: Sky Plays and Invitations

The “Site”:

               Leodore Lionheart was enthralled; a state of mind he had not experienced since he was a cub.  As he gazed into the darkened space above him, his ears heard the summertime night sounds of insects and frogs calling to one another.  Accompanying them was a barely heard stream of music that was both haunting and enticing.  That music had begun shortly after the visual display he watched had started.  Still images interspersed with movie pieces showing outdoor land and seascapes.  Scenes of rugged wild forests on the sides of mountains and in any valley areas between them, others of white, almost silver, in some cases, sand ocean shores and the vast seas they edged.  Visions of mighty rivers flowing through the landscapes, some slow flowing and meandering, others fast running with white water foam streaming over and around the rocks of treacherous rapids and cascading in waterfalls.  Lakes great and small with their own waterways in and out of them.  An abundance of plant life and so many non-sentient animals that their profusion and variety bordered on bewildering.  From there, the scenes changed in that they went from full daylight to evening and night ones.  The insect and other minor life sounds came with that change, and the night skies displayed light shows that few mammals got to see because of all of the light pollution of the present day modern world.  Bands or streams of stars packed so tightly together as there looked to be no space between them.  Interwoven within them were stretches and blobs of black, thick clouds of dust and, maybe, dark matter blocking the light.  In several, more than one moon was visible (he’d seen two worlds with three moons, in various phases, in their darkened skies).  Those last ones were impressive but what came afterwards left them all in the dust.  The entranced lion, laid back on a comfortably padded lounge chair, was treated to three galaxy rises, each one more impressive than the previous one.  It was these that had the President of the Federated States so captivated.  So much so, that he failed to hear the small increase in the volume of the background music.  This was the third one of them, and the most optically stunning.  The holograph mammals had gone all out to make this ‘show’ as realistically dazzling as they could without any additional artificial enhancement.  The double barred spiral galaxy, tilted several degrees to one side, ‘sailed’ above in all its majesty.  Then, the leading edge dipped below the horizon with the remainder following.  As the last bit disappeared from view, the night sounds faded with the music going seconds afterwards, the final notes and tone leaving the big feline with a longing for more.  The room remained dark and Lionheart, in a small hope to retain and relive the wonder of what he’d seen, closed his eyes and found that it was still there.  Several minutes passed as he savored it.  Then…

               “Allen, you know you’re an ass, and I don’t mean descriptively!” the maned cat declared.

               In the darkness of the holographic chamber, the cape buffalo bull smirked.

               “In what way?” he inquired.

               “Because you show me things that I can never have a chance to see for real and make me want more of it!”

               The following silence lasted for a few seconds.

               “You don’t know that,” Bogo said.  “You could…”

               “Try stepping into the ‘shed’; into the field,” Leodore finished.  “Two out of 143 have shown themselves immune to the fear.  Not real good odds.”

               “True.  But that is the only way to find out for sure,” the Chief said.

               Eyes still closed, Lionheart memory reviewed the displays he had seen.

               “I find it hard to believe that these, especially the night sky videos, were done with smartphone cameras,” he said.

               “Wilde is something of a tech. junkie.  As such, he likes to be up on the best…’toys’ available.  After he recovered Judith and taught her how to use computers and a smartphone, he saw to it that she got the best as well.  We were able to enhance things a bit due to their setting up the phones some 2000 feet apart and making sure they were as level as possible.  This helped to make a slightly stereographic effect that we were able to exploit when putting together the displays,” Bogo explained.

               Again, Lionheart was quiet, taking a short time to think.

               “So, other than teasing me with the sight of things so wondrous, what are you after?” he asked.

               “Up to now, we haven’t had the need for astronomy and astrophysics mammals on our team,” the Chief said.

               “And, now, you do,” the President said.  “You need them to do checks of main sequence star positions to see if the universes these worlds are in are either close to, if not spot on, the same as ours.  Plus, to find out anything else astronomically that they can.”

               A thoughtful pause.

               “And, for them to tell you what, in the way of equipment and techniques, is needed to get more and better raw data out of future visits,” he added.

               “Correct,” Bogo replied.

               “Budget money won’t be a problem but getting the clearances done for the selected mammals will take some time.  Due to the…sensitivity of this operation we have to keep the risk of any leaks to the minimum of a minimum.”

               “True.  But I have one mammal in mind who, with her assistant, we can get on this in a very quick time.”

               “You’re referring to Sharla Woolverson and her great granddaughter Sheela Woolverson,” Leodore said.

               “Yes.  We’ve already ran the security checks on them and found very little that presents any problems.”

               “They qualify for 5 Alpha clearances?  Because that is what they’ll need to be most effective at this.”

               “Yes, they do.”

               Pause.

               “Very well, get on it,” the President directed.

               “We already are,” thought Bogo as he brought up the lights.

               “Now, I wish to propose the addition of one other mammal to the team,” the Chief said.

               “Another astronomer?”

               “No, this one is…more of an acoustics tech,” Bogo said as he popped out the recording chip that held that haunting music.

               He had to return it to its owner/composer right away.  There was one other copy and when it had served its purpose, it, too, would be returned.

               *             *             *             *             *               *             *             *             *             *               *             *

Bunnyburrow, newly purchased rural house and property:

               “…and that, in something of a nutshell, is what we’ve been doing for the last year and a half,” Judy concluded.

               The bunny had spent close to forty minutes bringing her listener up-to-date of her and Nick’s explorations of the complex, with a short history of how she had ended up there, the presence of the gates, and the worlds they had visited as a result.  She really didn’t know how Sharla would take all of this.  Still, her retention of her own ‘youth’ in spite of the passage of six decades should…would, hopefully, lend things more credence.  The old silver fleeced ewe held a neutral expression on her face as she looked to her best friend.

               “Well, this is certainly going to rattle the world if it ever gets out to the public,” she said, at last.

               “Not much doubt of that.  I have it on good authority that it’s rattled the very few who are privy to it,” Judy said.  “Currently, I’m not sure I would want the general public to know of this.”

               “Reason or reasons?” Sharla asked.

               “Huff, the best way I can describe it is something said in the movie “Mammals In Black”.  An agent-to-be asked his recruiter why they didn’t let the public know the truth about their extensive contacts with alien species.  “People are smart, they can handle it,” he said.  His older, more experienced, partner’s reply was “A person is smart.  People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.”

               Judy shook her head.

               “I think he would have been wise to add in conniving and greedy but, then, that likely falls under his ‘dangerous’ designation,” she added, remembering the Coombs’ attempt on her.

               In her long life, Sharla had dealt with a wide range of mammals, some of whom fell into the section of Judy’s outlook.  Thus did the ewe find herself in agreement with those sentiments.

               “And what does that ‘say’ about us as an ‘intelligent, evolved people?” she thought.  “Maybe that’s why these aliens never bothered with getting in any real contact with us.  We really haven’t, as yet, shown ourselves worthy of that ‘intelligent’ label.”

               She considered that idea for a few more seconds.

               “And might explain why these aliens never bothered to invade this world.  Once they isolated the complex they didn’t consider us a problem anymore.  They might look upon us the way we do ants; annoying and not really useful for much of anything.  So why bother with us.”

               She returned her attention to Judy.

               “So, other than amazing and concerning me, at the same time, is there a reason for telling me all of this,” Sharla asked.

               “Yes.  How would you like to come work for the Complex Overwatch team?” Judy said.

               Her friend, appearing to think that over, didn’t say anything for a bit.

               “Why would they want an astronomer?” she questioned, at last.

               “I think it would be better if I showed you,” the rabbit said as she picked up her tote.

               From the bag she extracted a set of VR (virtual reality) goggles, handed them to Sharla, and instructed her to put them on.

               “Now, lean back, relax, and enjoy the show,” Judy said as she activated the program.

               The show that the ewe was treated to was an extended version of the one Lionheart had seen, complete with the music.  Although not in 3D, it retained most of its effect.  Sharla was at the end of the show when Judy saw Nick and Sheela returning from their walk through the countryside.  The fox had chosen to brief the 19-year-old ewe during their stroll.  As they approached, Judy saw the body language Sheela projected, confirming what she had seen earlier in the day.

               “Nick’s right, not that that’s any surprise.  He’s a lot better at ‘reading’ mammals,” she thought to herself as her eyes followed the pair.

               “So, you finally noticed.”

               Turning her head to that voice, Judy saw that Sharla had removed the VR goggles and that she was watching tod and teen ewe as they went into the house.

               “Yes, Nick brought it to my attention,” Judy said.

               Sharla saw her friend, bemused expression on her face, shake her head a couple of times.

               “Shows you how good my ‘female intuition’ has been before paw,” the bunny added.

               Judy turned her head to look at the house.

               “Now what?” Sharla asked.

               The bunny didn’t say anything for several seconds.

               “We deal with it,” came Judy’s answer.

               The neutral tone of her voice gave nothing away.

               “By the way,” Judith said as she reached for and picked up her tote once more.

               She slipped a paw inside and, then, extracted a 5 x 7 inch faded blue colored envelope.

               “Here you go,” she said, handing it to Sharla.

               Taking it, she opened the loose flap and extracted the piece of card stock inside to read it.

               “You are cordially invited to attend the wedding of…”

Chapter Text

               Stopping her slow pacing, the bridesmaid looks out of the livingroom picture window.  The sun has already set, the last of its rays fading even as she watches.  Towards the upper middle of that great pane of glass was a moon in the cloudless sky that she knows is just three days from being full.  Stars are already showing themselves as a frame for that moon.

               “A night for lovers and their activities,” she murmurs aloud.

               The young fem had fantasies about those activities, ones specific to her species.  Passionate dreams of a strong masterful male dominating her, taking her and making her his for the rest of their lives.  A quiver of carnal delight ran through her form at the ghost sensations those desire visions stirred up in her, ones she had experienced many times over the last two years.

               “And that is all they will ever be,” she thought, forlornly.

                *            *             *             *             *               *             *             *             *             *               *             *

               “I’ll be ready in about a minute!” called the hidden Judy.

               “I’m waiting with bated breath!” Sharla replied.

               The ewe’s curiosity was high as Judith had kept the appearance of her wedding gown at a level of secrecy that befitted the bunny’s security clearance level.  A moment later, there was a rustle of fabric and the doe came out from behind the concealing screen to stop in front of her friend.  There, Judy did one slow 360 degree turn around. Though mostly of traditional design, there was something that wasn’t.

               “Interesting…coloration,” Sharla commented.

               “You were expecting ’White for the purity of the bride and her virginity’,” Judy quoted with a wicked expression on her face. “I don’t know about my ‘purity’ but the virginity part definitely sailed, along with all its escorts, out of port a year and a half ago!”

               Sharla checked the gown over and made a couple of minor adjustments on it.  Judy glanced at the clock.

               “Almost time,” she said. “Help me get the cloak on and arranged.”

               By the time a knock sounded on the door, all was ready.

               *             *             *             *             *               *             *             *             *             *               *

               “I wonder what’s with the groom being cloaked up?” asked more than a few of the attendees.

               The aforementioned cloak, black as a lightless night sky, left only the head of the tod visible.  Nick’s best male, a mountain lion named Roy McBride, stood close by.  The parson, a 46-year-old rabbit buck, Stanly Hopps, stood on a platform that brought him almost eye level with the vulpine.  Another, empty, platform of similar height stood on the side opposite of Nick.  There were five steps that led up to it.

               “This isn’t exactly a traditional wedding,” observed others.

               “A formal joining of a fox and rabbit in matehood being held in a nature preserve that takes three divine miracles to get just the permits approved.  You bet your fur it’s not traditional!” some answered.  “Even the music isn’t what one would expect for such an occasion.”

               The equipment playing the tunes was hidden behind a line of screens.  The music that played as things readied had a soothing tone, but, in a few places, that changed to one that those hearing it had them looking about for something like an approaching storm.

               “Warnings that life does not run smooth all the time,” a few old, and not so, mammals thought.

               Then, the music changed, notes and tempo of something approaching sounded and seconds later persons rounded the end of a screen.  First, came a six-year-old rabbit girl in a pretty dress.  She held a woven wicker basket in one paw and dipped her other paw into it to get the flower and clover petals out and toss them onto the path in front of her.

               “Oh, what a waste of perfectly tasty nibbles!” lamented many of the herbivore attendees.

               One she wolf eyed the bunny flower girl for a few seconds, then a humorous expression crossed her face.

               “A flower scented entrée?” she whispered sideways.

               Which earned her an elbowing from her mate!

               Next, came three more mammals.  One was a bunny sized figure that was more cloaked than the groom.  The only thing really showing was about half of the bridal bouquet sticking out through the front edges of that cloak.  At her left side walked Judy’s matron of honor, Sharla.  On her right walked a male that dwarfed them both.  Bogo, looking surprisingly dashing in his fitted tux, had agreed to be the one to give away the bride.  Upon reaching the alter, the flower doe tossed out one more pawful of petals then went to sit down on a place waiting for her.  Judy and her escorts arrived and stopped seconds later.  Bogo’s hands on her shoulders to steady her, Judy stepped up onto the platform.  The music stopped.

               “To all assembled here, I bid you welcome and ask that you be witness to the formal joining of Nicholas Wilde and Judith Hobson,” Stanly said.

               He looked to Bogo.

               “Who gives this female to her mate-to-be?” he asked.

               “I and her family do!” stated the buffalo.

               The buck nodded in assent but, instead of departing and sitting down, Bogo remained close by.

               “Nicholas P. Wilde, do you take this woman to be your formal mate?  To cherish her and be by her for all life?”

               “That I do!”

               The hearty statement got a mix of gasps, giggles, and chuckles.

               “And, do you, Judith L. Hobson, take this male to be your formal mate?  To cherish and be with for all life?”

               “That I do!” she said with a fervor to match Nick’s.

               That was a cue; Roy and Bogo reached out, took hold of the shoulder sections of the groom and bride’s cloaks and pulled them away.  A collective sound of surprise came from the audience.  Nick wore a tux, one that left the upper parts of his shoulders exposed.  Most of the rabbits and hares in attendance realized why and for a lot of them their respect for the fox rose.

               “He knows,” many said to themselves and to those beside them.

               There was one other thing different about that tux.  Instead of the usual black color it was a mix of grays, browns, and whites; Judy’s fur colors and patterning.

               Judy’s dress was almost painfully simple in its construction.  A long slip like length of silk ending barely an inch above the platform’s surface.  Thin straps left her shoulders mostly bare and she wore long gloves that ended at her upper arms.  An ear garland of tiny flowers encircled the base of her left ear and a two-foot-long filmy green colored veil trailed down from it.  As Sharla had noted, the dress was not the traditional white color, nor were the gloves.  Instead, it was a mix of russets, light and dark, reds, browns, with a light orange tinted cream color down the front.  The gloves started out being a brownish russet color at her paws then became lighter as they went up her arms.

               “Yup, those two have got it BAD for each other!” some thought/commented.

               “Rather than exchange rings or collars, Nicholas and Judith have chosen the more basic method to seal their matehood,” the buck said.

               With that, Nick stepped up to Judy, who was almost at his eye level, then scent marked her on her right shoulder and lower neck with his chin.  Then he did the same on her left shoulder.  Judy tipped her head up and back and Nick tipped his head sideways and took her neck in his jaws (more than a few lapines gasped at the action).  He held her for several seconds then let go to stand very close before her.  Judy’s turn, she lent forward to chin the tod on his right shoulder then on his left one.  He went to one knee and then she chinned the top of his head as well.  The fox stood and the pair, easy smiles on both of their faces, looked at one another, then turned to Stanly.

               “As you have, in front of this assemblage of witnesses, laid the old claims upon one another, I declare you formally sealed, mates for life!” the priest stated.

               With a triumphal “shout”, the music began again and, after assisting Judy down to the ground, Nick and his bunny mate walked down the aisle that ran down the middle of the assemblage.  Applause, whistles, hooraas, and other happy sounds came from all directions as they headed to the area of the reception.  A few noted that the flower girl following in their wake, was munching on some of the nibbles that were still in her basket.

               After the usual photos of the bride and groom, with and without members of their wedding party, were taken, the reception truly got under way.  The large open area filled with couples dancing to the upbeat music coming from the speakers surrounding the reception area.  A line of mammals formed who, singly, in pairs, and a few trios, stepped up to congratulate the couple and wish them well.  Stanly Hopps was the lead mammal in the line, and completely unaware that he had just officiated sealing his great aunt to her vulpine mate.  Some time passed and then someone stepped out from behind the screens that concealed the music gear.  The formally dressed badger merged into the crowd and it was several minutes before someone recognized him.

               “You…you’re…Cordell Madis!” the buck gasped.

               “Guilty as charged!” the musician replied.

               It wasn’t long before a few dozen mammals surrounded the badger.

               “Ho…How did you come to be here?!” asked an amazed fan.

               “I was going through some fan mail a few weeks ago and read a letter asking if I would consider attending a wedding, one involving a fox and a rabbit,” Cordell said.  “I’ve played for some functions but never a wedding.  So, what the hay, contacted the mammals and set things up, composed some music themes for it, and here I am.”

               Some of those there managed to come up with paper and requested autographs and Cordell spent several minutes signing them.  After that he begged off.

               “Well, I’m going to go mix and enjoy the reception,” the badger said.

               The assemblage of fans groaned.

               “Hey, I’d be a poor guest if I didn’t pay my respects to the mates,” he said as he broke away.

               “Thanks for coming,” Judy said as she extended her paw to Cordell.

               Rather than shake that paw, Madis held it so the back of her hand was upwards, bowed forward, and planted a long lingering kiss on the back of Judy’s wrist.  This was followed by a leisurely lick at the same spot.  He came back upright again to see an amused expression on Judy’s face and a wary one on Nick’s.

               “Don’t get any ideas, badger boy!” the tod said in a mock warning tone.

               “Greedy fox, you just want this tasty bunny all to yourself!” Cordell replied.

               “Is that all you two think of?  Food?” Judith, eyebrow raised, questioned.

               “Hey!  We’re guys!  Food is very important to us!” Nick chimed in.

               They, and those close enough to hear the exchange, had a good chuckle.  Stopping at the food and drinks table, Cordell snagged a fruit juice and then looked around.  Off to one side, he spotted Bogo sitting by himself, eyeing the drink he held in one hand.  The expression on his face was anything but cheery.

               “Why the gloom, oh Great Chiefy Wiefy?” Madis asked as he stopped beside the big buff.

               Bogo did not answer right away.  Then he sighed.

               “We’re doomed,” he said.  “Doomed to a lifelong era of chaos, uncertainty, and snarkiness.”

               “Oh, thinking that Judy’s kits are all going to take after their sire in temperament?”

               That comment earned him a hard assessing look from the Chief.

               “Judy or Nick told you?” Bogo asked.

               “Nope.”

               Another look.

               “Your ‘song’,” the Chief said.

               “Judy’s part of it had three small notes added to it about 14 weeks ago.”

               Bogo continued to look at the newest full member of the Complex Watch team.  He felt smug amusement at the memory of the state of astonishment on the President’s face when he proposed adding the musician to the team.  Madis saw the Chief reach into a pocket from which he extracted a data memory chip and handed it to the badger.

               “A gift,” Bogo said.  “I owe Wilde a big favor for getting it before the wedding.”

               “What’s on it?” Cordell asked as he looked it over.

               “A recording of your ‘song’.”

               The mustelid, startled expression on his face, looked to the Chief.

               “I thought electronics didn’t work down in the ‘Plex,” he said.

               “They don’t.”

               Pause.

               “Then how…”

               “What were some of the earliest sound recordings done with?” the buff asked.

               “Well, the first really successful ones were done by placing a steel needle, at the narrow end of a kind of a megaphone horn, against a cylinder coated with wax.  You got the cylinder turning and yelled or sang whatever you wanted into the horn.  The sound waves vibrate the needle and inscribe wave patterns into the wax as a screw mechanism moved the horn down along the cylinder.  When you’re done, run the horn back to the beginning, place the needle in the groove, and start the cylinder turning again.  The inscribed patterns in the groove vibrate the needle and play the recording out through the horn.  The quality wasn’t great, but when it is all that you have…”

               A metaphysical light “pinged” on in Cordell’s head.

               “You did a high tech version of the wax cylinder and recording device!”

               Bogo nodded.

               “Our sound tech mammals put it together to get as highly accurate a sound recording as possible in order to assess the sounds and tones.  Don’t know that we’ll learn much of anything from them but, who knows.  I talked Wilde into going down to level 38 where the ‘music’ is most prevalent and do a series of recordings.”

               “Keep it to myself?” Madis asked.

               “That, or use it in your other music’s.  Your choice.”

               The badger threw a surprised look at Bogo.  After all of the security briefs he had received about not revealing ANYTHING about what was going on in the “Plex watchers’ work, the latter part of the Chief’s last statement was unexpected.  Then…

               “Because anyone hearing it will think it’s just another piece I’ve composed,” he said.

               Bogo nodded.

               Just then, there was a great cry at the reception area and both males looked to it just in time to see the bridal bouquet go flying.

Epilogue:

               Sheela, still dressed in her bridesmaid gown, slow paced to the livingroom window to look outside.  The sun had set below the horizon, throwing fading red, orange, and yellow rays upwards into the sky.  A bright and cheery scene and it lifted her spirits a little.  She had known it was going to happen; if two mammals were fated to be together it was Judy and Nick.  That became plain during their few weeks of stay at Sharla’s home.  Still, there was a hopelessly romantic part of her that….  She looked down at the object she held in her hands.  Its presence mocked her.  Sheela had been drawn by a couple of friends into the crowd of fems that were trying to catch the bridal bouquet.

               “Why would I want to catch...” she thought miserably.

               “Here it comes!” someone yelled.

               “Sheela!” someone else hollered.

               She looked up to see something coming right at her face.  Instinctively, the ewe grabbed to catch it to keep from being hit.  The next thing she knew, Sheela held Judy’s bridal bouquet in her hands.  While those around her expressed delight or envy at her catch, all she could see was a colorful reminder of the mate she would not have.

               “I’m not sure why I still have it,” Sheela murmured to herself as she looked the arrangement of flowers over.

               Tempting as it was, she could not bring herself to put it aside.

               “Good, you’re here.”

               Head coming up then turning towards that voice, Sheela’s heartbeat jumped up at seeing the fox of her life.  Beside him stood Judy, and both walked towards her.  Their clothing caught her attention.  They should have been dressed casually to depart on their honeymoon.  Instead, Nick wore a full tux while Judy had on a gown similar to one the bridesmaids wore.  Both sets of clothing were black.

               “Black as my own fleece,” she thought.

               Even the small bouquet of flowers that Judy held in her paws was black colored.  A part of Sheela’s mind noted that the bunny walked a couple of steps behind and to one side of Nick.  And that her demeanor was…demure.  In contrast, Nick projected confidence and determination as he marched up to her.  When he came to a stop barely a foot away, the young ewe trembled at the unseen wave of assertion that radiated from the vulpine.  Though he was the same height as herself, he seemed to tower over her.  A basic instinct deep within Sheela reacted to all of this, one that wanted this fox to…

               Suddenly, Nick bent forward to lay the chin of his muzzle on the sheep’s right shoulder at the side of her neck.  There, he rubbed that chin back and forth several times.  Then, he repeated the procedure on her left shoulder and neck base.  Withdrawing, he looked into her blue eyes for a few seconds.  Somewhere in her head, Sheela’s mind was tripping over itself as she understood the meaning of what was happening.

               “YEEEK!” she bleated when jaws clamp around her neck.

               Sharp teeth dig in to the point that they pierce her skin and draw blood.  The young ewe made no move to pull back or fend the fox off.  A low growl emanated from the tod’s throat.  Sheela closed her eyes at the feel of her desired one’s hot breath wafting over the fleeceless front of her throat.  Everything that happened sent feelings of satisfaction and contentment through her, soothing and washing away the aching want and disappointment within her.  When Nicholas released her, she experienced a pang of disappointment at losing that intimate contact with the male she so desired.  When the ewe opened her eyes, she saw the tod looking at her with a neutral expression on his face.

               “Sheela Woolverson, do you accept my claim upon you?” he asked.

               “Maker of ALL, he knows!” she thought.  “Knows that it is the ewe’s option to accept or reject…”

               Both Nick and Judy saw Sheela nod.

               “I, Sheela Woolverson, accept, without reserve, the claim of Nicholas Wilde upon me,” she said.

               With those words, Nick brought up his paws and fitted a snow white collar around the ewe’s neck and locked it into place.  The color symbolized that the wearer’s life was now in the paws of another.  That said wearer surrendered themselves to their dominant claimant.  Sheela brought up one hand to touch her fingertips to the collar.  The feel of it, along with everything else that happened over the last couple of minutes had wiped her previous sense of gloomy loss to….

               Judy stepped up to Sheela and looked up to her.

               “Welcome to the family, comate,” she said.

Chapter Text

Chapter 24: Working Surprise

               “Mmmmmmmm, I need a stretch!” Sharla muttered to herself.

               Very carefully, she moved something on her lap to a basket by her side, then stood up, closed her eyes, and did a full arms above her head body stretch.  After that, she held her arms out from her sides and did several half body twists to further loosen her muscles up.  There were far fewer ‘cracks’ and ‘pops’ than there had been a couple of years earlier.  Opening her eyes, the elder ewe scanned around the room.

               “A ‘shack’.  What is it with males and their tendency to under or over state things?” she thought.

               Half of the great livingroom had eight computer stations set up in four pairs.  Four large blackboards on casters so they could be moved around easily, and a couple of 90 inch flat screens.  There were two laser sat. link systems that kept them in contact with the outside world, their data transfer rates would have made any tech junkie drool with envy.  Tucked away in the basement was a small but powerful mainframe computer.  While the laser comms allowed access to NASA’s database and any others that they might want to delve into, that main frame had data stored on it that was only for the eyes of a dozen mammals.  As such, there were two separate setups; one for communicating with the outside world, the other to the basement mainframe.  And, for security reasons, each was isolated from the other, thus  the need for the paired stations.

               “’Ner’ the twain shall meet’,” Sharla quoted to herself.

               The security was understandable, considering that the data on the basement comp. was not just out of this world but out of this Universe as well.  She and her assistant were running match up programs to see if any of the photos of the stars in the skies of those alternate Terras might indicate that they were in their own universe or in different ones.

               “Getting clearer, more detailed, star photos will help clarify things,” she thought.  “We’ll have more of that soon.”

               Sharla spent a lot of time reviewing the data that Judy and Nick had brought back from their explorations through the Gates and listening to them telling her of their experiences.  She was careful to note the weights and sizes of items they had transported down into and through the Complex.  From this information, she had to figure out what equipment and items could be taken in and used by the fox and rabbit.  Wide viewing equipment to catch shots of the whole sky, narrow view telescopes to get shots of smaller patches and items of interest.  Instruments to measure the local gravity and planet’s magnetic field, and weather sensing and recording stations.   With all of this, there was a continual balancing act between better capabilities (and more weight and size, as a result) and keeping in mind the limits of what the fox and rabbit could carry with them.

               “We need more mammals to do the work,” Sharla thought.  “I hope Bogo and his crew can come up with some way to find more of them.”

               Looking over to her left, Sharla saw her twice removed granddaughter working at her own comp. station.  Sheela wore a pair of cargo shorts and a t-shirt that was a couple of sizes too big for her.  Said shirt had the lower part trimmed away so that the bottom edge of it was at the midpoint of her midriff.       Around the 20-year-old ewe’s neck rode a snow white collar that was a touch over an inch in width.  An inch and a half oblong shiny steel ring rode on it at the front of her throat and there was a D shaped ring set in it at the back of her neck where her shoulder blade length fleece hair covered it.  That collar was the symbol of her matehood and its color signified her total submission to the fox tod who had claimed her, a claim she had more than willingly accepted.

                                                                           *               *             *             *

               Sharla became aware of Sheela’s interest in Nick a few weeks after their initial meeting.  The young ewe spent more time working with her grandmother as Sharla got back into her science career.  In spite of her work, Sheela still found time to visit with most of her girlfriends while going out with fewer and fewer male friends until that ended altogether.  In the meantime, Sharla noted the greater amount of attention to Nick.  That she obeyed the tod with less and less reluctance and her side looks to Nick when she was sure he wasn’t aware of them became more and more obvious.

               “All that is a waste, hon.  He is very aware of your interest in him!” Sharla thought in amusement.

               Of course, the one thing keeping the teen ewe from making her interest open to Nick was the plainly visible relationship between him and Judith.  Judy’s lack of awareness of the situation amused Sharla.  But, her g-g-granddaughter’s ongoing desire for Nick began to get worrisome when that interest did not lessen in the face of the near inevitability of Judy and him becoming mates.  Then, the pair disappeared into the Complex and were not heard from for over a year.  And there were several times that Sheela had broken down and cried because she feared the complete loss of Nick.

               “I didn’t get a chance to tell him…” she wept once.

               “I know, I know,” Sharla said, hugging the teen ewe to her.

               Then, came the day a totally joyful Sheela came shouting into the house waving a sheet of paper.

               “He’s alive!  He’s back!!” she yelled as she handed the paper over.

               Sharla took it and read;

                              “They are back.”

               It was hand signed “Allen Bogo”.

               Putting the paper down, Sharla looked to Sheela to see the tears of relief streaming from her eyes.

               “Come here,” she said as she opened her arms.

               Sheela came to her, hugging her elder relative, as she sobbed out her relief on Sharla’s shoulder.

               “I’ve got to do something about this,” she thought as she patted the teen’s back as if she were a child.

               But, she was at a loss as to what that might be.  A few weeks later, Sharla and Sheela were invited to the home and property, outside of Bunnyburrow, that Nick had newly purchased.    There, Judy pitched the idea for Sharla to join them at the Site.  Part of the pitch was watching and listening to a VR play of landscape and sky scenes of a number of the new worlds they had visited.  That play had finished and Sharla had removed the goggles in time to see Nick and Sheela return from their walk where she presumed he had made a similar pitch.  She saw Judy’s eyes following the pair as they entered the house, him holding the door open for Sheela, and then they disappeared inside.  The look on the bunny doe’s face said it all.

            “So, you finally noticed.”

              “Yes, Nick brought it to my attention,” Judy said.

               Sharla saw her friend, bemused expression on her face, shake her head a couple of times.

               “Shows you how good my ‘female intuition’ has been before paw,” the bunny added.

               Judy turned her head to look at the house.

               “Now what?” Sharla asked.

               The bunny didn’t say anything for several seconds.

               “We deal with it,” came Judy’s answer.

               After that, Judy gave her longtime friend an invitation to their planned wedding, something that Sharla had had no doubt was coming.

               “Nick will give one to Sheela at any moment,” Judith said.

               The elder ewe was used to holding a ‘poker face’ but Judy’s eyes were sharp and she knew her friend all too well.

               “You are worried about Sheela,” she stated.

               “Sigh, yes.  She is…I think the word is ‘imprinted’, on Nick.  To do without him….”

               Pause.

               “Why should she do that?”

               Sharla’s eyes locked onto the bunny and took several seconds to examine her friend’s face.  The expression on it was one of serene calm.

               “The two of you have already sorted it out and made a decision,” she said.

               Judy nodded.

               “Multimate relationships, matings, are not uncommon.  Nick and I see no reason that we cannot include Sheela as a comate,” she said.

               There was a moment of quiet.

               “Then I need to talk to Nick, he needs to know how to handle this,” Sharla said.

               She considered things for a few more seconds.

               “And there is something I need to talk to you about, as well.”

                                                            *             *               *             *             *             *

               With Nick and Judy settled in their seats, Sharla seated herself and looked to Nick.

               “Nick, many sheep ewes instinctively want, respond to, strong dominant rams…”

               She gave the vulpine a pointed look.

               “…or, in this case, a fox tod,” she said.  “Am I correct in that you do intend to claim her as a mate?”

               “Yes.  Classic vulpine scent marking and neck bite claiming,” Nick said.

               “When are you planning to do that?”

               “At the reception.”

               Sharla shook her head.

               “No.  This is your time and nothing should interrupt it,” she said.

               She thought on this for a minute.  Then, she recalled how low Sheela was feeling and a couple of things ‘clicked’ together.

               “’From the depths of despair to the heights of joy!’” Sharla remembered.

               “I have an idea,” she said.

               She spent several minutes laying things out to the couple (including what to wear).  Both caught on to what the timing meant.

               “I didn’t know you had this kind of drama in you,” Judy commented.

               “Wellll, there are a few things I’ve managed to keep to myself,” Sharla said.  “It would be even better if we could make sure she caught the bridal bouquet.”

               “No problem.  She gets positioned in the crowd I’ll be able to get it straight to her,” Judy said.

               “With your back turned?” Sharla asked, with a raised eye ridge.

               Nick grinned.

               “Trust me, she’ll do it,” he said, remembering a towel hit he’d taken.

               Sharla looked at Nick and her demeanor became serious.

               “Nicholas, you are a predator.  With Sheela, BE a PREDATOR!!  Strong, confident, powerful, DOMINANT!  She is one of the ewes that has to have her mate be ALL to her.”

               Sharla reached into her handbag and pulled out something.  Holding it up, Nick and Judy saw a collar that was snow white in collar and possessing two steel rings.

               “This is the thing that you will use to seal your claim on her.”

               “Should she accept my claim,” Nick injected.

               “I see you’ve studied up on that sheep ritual.  Good,” she said.

               “I’m aware that there are five collar colors, each meaning a different level of submission,” Nick said.

               He nodded to the collar.

               “And that that color means total, and I do mean TOTAL, submission to whom puts it on her.”

               He gave Sharla a quizzical look.

               “You are sure she is of that level of submission?”

               “Where you are concerned, yes,” she replied.

               “How far do I go to…demonstrate my dominance?” he asked.

               “How far you choose to take it is up to you,” Sharla said.  “You don’t have to demonstrate this a lot of the time, just enough, or more, to keep her aware of your…power will suffice.”

               She was quiet for a few more seconds.

               “Nick, as someone with teeth, she’ll expect you to bite her at times, during sex and at other odd times.  Binding and restraining her is expected as well.”

               “She’s that…?”

               Sharla nodded.

               Nick had guessed a lot of this but the rest would take him a little time to digest.  Fortunately, he had nearly two weeks to do that.

                                                                           *               *             *             *

               Sharla resettled herself at her work station and resumed her work.

               “MmmmaaaAAAA.”

               The sound came from the basket and Sharla brought one hand down to the fussing kit to pat and rub on his back.

               “There, there, little one, I’m here.  No need to feel alone,” she said, in a soft tone, to the six month old.

               Little Stuart, named for his mother’s father, quieted down, Sharla’s actions reassuring him that there was someone there to give him attention.  The kit was the image of his vulpine sire, right down to his fur colors and patterning, except for one thing.  When he opened his eyes, they were, in the main, his mother’s color.  The difference in those eyes was that they had a metallic sheen look to them that hers did not.

               “It’s highly likely that his night vision will be exceptional, even for a fox,” the docs told them.

               “Wonder if that is due to his mother’s modified genes,” she thought as she did another stretch with her arms held high over her head.

               Out of the corner of her eye, a movement caught Sharla’s attention and she looked that way to see Sheela doing her own hard hands and arms above head stretch.  That stretch threw a difference in Sheela’s body more into prominence.  The upper front of her cut off shirt was pushed out a few inches from her chest by a pair of fully functional lactating breasts.  Just a few weeks before the birthing of Nick and Judy’s kits, Sheela had begun a treatment that would ‘sprout’ her breasts out and get them ‘online’ to produce milk.  Thusly, she could breastfeed little Stuart plus his two sisters, who occupied baskets on opposite sides of her.  On Sheela’s right, dozed Bonnie, named for her maternal grandmother.  She was a rabbit mostly in her mother’s fur colors and patterning.  The two exceptions were her russet colored puff of a tail and she had her sire’s emerald green eyes, eyes that had the same sheen as her brother’s.  Asleep in the left side basket was a fox vixen who’s fur colors and patterns, and eyes (metallic sheened as well), matched her father’s while her tail was light gray colored from its root down to the silver colored tip.  Sharla smiled softly as she looked at the small dozing vixen.  Judy and Nick had surprised the elder ewe by bestowing Sharla’s name to their other daughter.  Just then, her namesake began fussing and Sheela immediately directed her attention to the little vixen.  A quick check showed that her diaper was clean, so the ewe pulled up the left side of her cutoff t-shirt to expose the breast and put the kit to it and she immediately began to suckle on the nipple.  Sheela leaned back in her chair, humming happily as the little vixen fed.  After several minutes, the kit slowed, then, a moment later, stopped.  Throwing a towel over one shoulder, Sheela placed the infant to that shoulder and patted her back until the kit burped.  That done, she gently laid the vixen back in her basket where she patted the child’s back a few times.  Seconds later, little Sharla was in dreamland.  All that time, Sheela had continued her humming and went on doing so as she returned to working.  Taking the sleeping Stuart from his basket and cradling him in one arm, Sharla got up and went to her g-g-granddaughter.

               “You’re quite happy today,” Sharla said to the humming ewe.

               Sheela stopped, then reached to a small box by the keyboard, opened it, and pulled out three items and handed them to her elder relative.  Sharla recognized them and, with her free hand, looked at the indication on one side of each of them.  Those indicators all read the same.  After laying those items back down in their box, she looked at her emotionally glowing great-great-granddaughter then turned away to go back to her own work station.  Almost there, Sharla looked down at the kit dozing in her cradling arm.

               “Well, Stuart, I’m going to be a three times great grandmother and you and your sisters will have a younger halfsib to play with and fuss over,” she said to the infant tod.

               The kit did a jaw cracking yawn then snuggled himself in and resumed his sleep.