To Thine Own Self Be Zoo
Vol. II No. 4
Winter Solstice 2024

CONTENTS:
[1] Jaguar Herpes
[2] Wicked Talents
[3] And in Dream I
[4] Twenty Thousand Units Down
[5] A Poem




[1]

Jaguar Herpes

PATIENT is sitting in a chair in a doctor's office. As he is idly
looking around, he scratches his groin, but quickly stops when he
hears a knock at the door.

After the knock, DOCTOR enters. She sits down in her swivel chair,
and looks at PATIENT. She gives him a look as though she's
puzzling something out, tilting her head and putting a hand to her
chin.

DOCTOR
Your lab results came back, you have jaguar herpes.

PATIENT (immediately defensive:)
Is "jaguar" like, a specific version of normal herpes?

DOCTOR
It's herpes that you get from having sex with a jaguar. Big cat
with the spots.

PATIENT
Do jaguars even have herpes?

DOCTOR
Yes all of them, it's one of the only STIs an animal can give to a
human actually. In most cases we're different species and the STIs
kinda just bounce off, so if you're looking at bestiality,

PATIENT (interrupting:)
Woah woah woah, no one has said anything about BESTIALITY.

DOCTOR
Well, it's, jaguar herpes. You get it from having sex with a
jaguar.

PATIENT
Could it happen if like, someone was AROUND a jaguar?

DOCTOR (amused:)
It's not airborne.

PATIENT
But like, if a jaguar sat somewhere, and then later a human sat
there, is there like, a chance that maybe her rash could get onto
him?

DOCTOR
No.

PATIENT
Not even a one in a thousand chance?

DOCTOR
It's transmitted by a jaguar's sloppy pussy juice interacting with
a human's precum and then going back up the dickhole, it's innate
unless the jaguar is VERY aroused and the human penis is
SIGNIFICANTLY involved.

PATIENT
Okay okay okay sure, but a human can also get it from ANOTHER
HUMAN who has it.

DOCTOR
No the jaguar pussy juice is crucial.

PATIENT
Ugh, well, maybe someone was just, working on jaguar breeding and
then ate lunch without washing their hands?

DOCTOR
Yuck.

PATIENT
Well I'm just saying! It sounds like there could be a lot of
different ways it COULD spread around!

DOCTOR
Nnnno it's from having sex with a jaguar. The first research
papers on it actually said "masturbating using a jaguar" even to
refer to like, an alive, aroused jaguar.

PATIENT
Oh that's weird.

DOCTOR
Right?

PATIENT
Huh.

Pause.

PATIENT scratches his groin. Then he suddenly moves his hand away,
and says,

PATIENT
Sorry.

DOCTOR (totally nonjudgmental, "nah don't worry about it":)
No I understand.

PATIENT
I just think there must be other tests we can do, to figure out if
it might be something else.

DOCTOR
What do you do for a living?

PATIENT (busted.)
I work in a... zoo.

DOCTOR
What's your job in the zoo?

PATIENT
Security guard.

DOCTOR
Do you work days, nights?

PATIENT
Nights.

Awkward pause.

DOCTOR
It's probably jaguar herpes.

PATIENT
It's probably jaguar herpes.

DOCTOR
Shortly before the itching started do you recall if you had sex
with a jaguar?

PATIENT
Shortly before the itching started... it is true... that I did...
now that you mention it... have a little bit of sex with a jaguar.
She was eyefucking me through the glass, how could I not get in
there, you know?

DOCTOR (flourishes a prescription paper:)
Take one of these every day for the itching, also kangaroos have
gonorrhea and most gorillas have syphilis.




[2]

Wicked Talents

I rub a hand against my cheek, and my stubble makes a sound
reminiscent of scratching a dog. Heh.

Down the hall a door opens, out of sight from my cell in the brig
unless I were to go to the bars and press my face against them.
Footsteps approach. I yawn, covering my mouth, as Petty Officer
Wanner enters my sight. He pauses, turns to me, and shows me his
startled look openly.

"Chief Boston sir," he says, and then he salutes me.

I stand up from the metal bench and give him a salute in return. I
lower my salute, and he lowers his.

He asks me, "Do you need to be let out?"

"Check the logbook," I instruct him.

He turns to a sheet posted between two of the (empty) cells
opposite mine.

Not that I'm counting, but he has made three mistakes already, in
his very brief time since entering the brig and walking down to my
cell. Firstly, when entering he did not shout ALL UP, and then use
the video streams on the station nearby to the door to ensure that
all detainees have complied and stood hands-up in the center of
their cell; his decision not to follow protocol will, likely, go
unremarked upon, only because his only superior who is in this
room currently is also one of the detainees, actually the only
detainee at present, and, it's been a long day for me, and if I
don't have to go through the rigmarole of turning naked in a
circle to prove I'm not concealing anything, I won't look a gift
horse in the mouth. His second mistake is that he has volunteered
an offer to free a detainee, and this decision has only failed to
be a catastrophe because of the detainee's good will. Thirdly, he
has then turned his back to the detainee because the detainee
asked him to, and this decision has only failed to leave him out
cold on the teal nuvo-steel floor because the detainee has not
smuggled or crafted any manner of shiv to throw (and, again,
because of my good will).

This is not the kind of work that I like to see from my crew.

Petty Officer Wanner, reading the logbook, is currently finding
out that I was checked in three hours ago by Petty Officer Yates
under the authority of Master Amdi, who he knows (or, ought to
know) is visiting to assess our operations.

Petty Officer Wanner takes in a long breath, and lets out a long,
harsh sigh.

He turns to face me again, and asks, "You don't have any weapons
or anything, do you?"

I spread open my bare hands.

He gives a little sigh. He does not like this. He asks me, "What
are you in for? And--no, first of all, who's piloting?"

Ding ding, he has found the million dollar question to ask upon
seeing that your pilot is locked up in your brig sans clothes or
yokes. It's not that the work needs my supervision at all times,
anyways: in the vastness of space, and with long-range sensors as
good as ours, I can typically program a course days out. But yes,
he indeed should be wondering who's deciding where we go right
now.

"Master Amdi's pilot, Chief Nance, has taken over my
responsibilities with regards to navigation."

He nods.

I could be making it up. He should not trust me. But I am learning
today that I exude a very trustworthy aura--more-so than is always
warranted.

He asks, "So, what the hell happened? What do they think you did?"

Even there: not "What did you do?" Instead he wants to know "What
do THEY THINK you did?"

I tell him, "Imaginary treason."

He is perplexed. "Imaginary, sir?"

"As part of Master Amdi's evaluation of me, I was placed into a
simulation and given an assignment. As the situation inside of the
simulation went on, I decided it prudent to abandon the mission
objective, lie to my superior, desert, and pilot a Draather vessel
to Earth."

He looks at me, his feelings injured, as if to ask, "You? YOU
would do that?"

"It's the same decisions I would make in real life. They wanted to
know what I would do? I showed them what I would do. There you
have it."

Petty Officer Wanner croaks out, "Why?"

In no hurry, I step forward towards my cell's bars.

He backs up, making himself out of reach.

I rest my forehead against a gap between bars, glare at him, give
him a really evil look, and I tell him: "They put my dog in the
simulation. So I said, fine: gloves off."

He nods, and then without another word, he continues past my cell,
and exits through another door on the opposite end of the brig.

An hour later, my stomach is grumbling. It's past what would
normally be dinner for me.

A door opens.

"ALL UP!"

I rise from my metal bench, and stand in the center of my cell,
hands up. One of Master Amdi's officers who I don't know has me
turn slowly in a circle, hands still raised, and then she places
some items of clothing on the ground outside of my cell. I dress
in the pale blue t-shirt, the blue boxers, the white pants. She
has even given me socks and sneakers. I am supposing that I will
not get the opportunity to shave, but, notwithstanding, the outfit
comes together well enough. It has a very civilian look to it. I
embrace that.

Master Amdi's officer who inspected me and gave me the clothing
opens my cell, puts me in handcuffs and shackles, and then her and
three more of Master Amdi's officers perform a high-flight-risk
escort on me, leading me out of the brig.

I expect that we are going to the interrogation room, and am
surprised when I am brought to one of the conference rooms; Two
types of rooms that are similar in concept, I suppose, but it does
feel quite a good deal more optimistic to be brought to the
conference room, of the two.

In the room, there is a round table with an off-white surface.
Upon the table are two dozen scattered candles, red wax, and these
candles provide the only light in the room after the door is
closed behind us. The walls are all painted black; there are
display screens embedded at certain points within the walls, but,
with them currently switched off, they blend in with the black
paint. Master Amdi sits at one side of the round table. I am put
into a chair opposite them, and then Master Amdi's officers back
off to the edges of the room, observing. The round table is just
large enough that leaping over it to strangle Master Amdi would be
an awkward move, even if I were not in handcuffs and shackles (not
to mention that my good will persists).

Master Amdi leans back in their chair for a moment, and then leans
forward over the table, cupping their mouth in their hands,
pensive, philosopher-like, wondering, staring at me.

I tell them, just like I told them when I got out of the
simulation: "You wanted to know what I would do. I showed you what
I would do."

Mouth still cupped in their hands, they say through their fingers,
"Let's review what it is that you 'did do,' Chief Boston. I want
to make sure we're on the same page about that."

I nod. I ask them, "What would you say that I did?"

"The simulation began with yourself, Commander Neemen, and
Specialist Lim aboard a space craft orbiting a Draather exoplanet.
A very, very cold sphere in the cosmos. Sunless, of course. The
mission, as Commander Neemen went over with you, was that you and
her were to be teleported down to the planet adjacent to a
Draather arms factory, operate sophisticated surveillance
technology to gain crucial intel about their supply routes, and
then you and Commander Neemen were to each inject yourselves with
a marking agent, allowing Specialist Lim to target each of you
with the teleporter, and bring you back aboard the orbiting space
craft. Do we agree, or do we not agree, that this is the board
that we began with?"

"You had also put down a king."

Master Amdi sighs through their nose. They go on, "As Commander
Neemen was discussing these items with you, you were reviewing
some of the intelligence that had been gathered about the
exoplanet, and about the arms factory."

"I was."

"And what was it, in your words Chief Boston, that stood out to
you from among that intelligence?"

"Vaquero."

"Being?"

"Among the assets boasted by the arms factory, one was an
Earthling creature of canid form, but with six robotic legs, each
prehensile, and a pulse grav-pack apparatus allowing for the
ability of flight. They claimed to have taken this Earthling
creature from some type of celebration, honoring the creature's
accomplishments in war, and were studying the creature to be
recreated for their own side. There were two photographs included
as well. I recognized that they had captured my partner, Vaquero."

Master Amdi does not nod, does not shake their head, does not
sigh, and all around could be mistaken for a statue. They then say
to me, "Tell me about Vaquero."

I answer, "He likes butter."

Master Amdi laughs. They pick up one of the red candles, and seem
to ponder over it for a moment, deciding whether to do something
with it (throw it at me? blow it out? I don't know,) and then they
merely continue to hold it. I see a line of red wax begin to melt
over the side of their clenched fingers. Master Amdi goes on, "So,
you did all of what you did, because Vaquero likes butter."

"Vaquero is a hero," I go on. "October 27th, 2209. The Craigen
experienced catastrophic failure on reentry into Earth's
atmosphere. Before being drafted, I specialized in search and
rescue work, with my partner, Vaquero. The Craigen Mislanding was
not far off the coast from where we lived. I flew us out and we
participated in the rescue efforts. He saved seven hundred and
nineteen lives."

"Did he."

"A sheep dog can guide many sheep; Vaquero guided many sheep that
day. He is a hero. He is a vastly valuable asset to Earthlings,
and Commander Neemen was going to let him be killed and dissected
by the enemy because she failed to appreciate his worth."

"She was your superior."

"She was not superior to him."

Master Amdi leans back in their chair. The red candle, which they
had still been holding in their hands, they set down on its side
on the table, pressing out the flame with their thumb and pointer
before laying it down.

Master Amdi continues. "So, then. What happens next. You,
Commander Neemen, and Specialist Lim are reviewing the
intelligence, the mission objective, and are planning your
itinerary."

-- -- --

Commander Neeman places two sewing pins into the map out on the
table. "Our recon points will be here, and here."

Chief Boston glances up from the intelligence papers, nods, and
looks back down to the papers.

Specialist Lim comments, "I can ALMOST bring each of you down at
exactly those locations. Commander Neemen, you will be, five feet
off, I can bring you in behind this boulder here." He points to
the boulder on a photograph of the location that is laid out on
the table.

Commander Neeman looks at the photograph, and says, "That works."

"Chief Boston, you will have to go a bit farther, but, not much. I
could bring you in ahead of the exact location, but, there's no
cover, you would be appearing in the open and then having to
retreat, if I do it that way. Instead, if I bring you in thirty
yards back, it's a little bit of a walk, but through THIS path,
you'll have cover the entire time."

Chief Boston continues to stare at the papers.

Commander Neeman prompts, "Chief Boston?"

Chief Boston says, without looking up from the papers, "Thirty
yards is fine."

Specialist Lim mentions, "Chief Boston, if I can get you to look
at the route that I mean, there is this one important part here,
you'll have to walk low, to keep your cover."

Chief Boston glances up and assesses where Specialist Lim is
pointing to in a photograph. "Noted," he says, and again looks
down at the papers.

Commander Neeman goes on. "With both of us able to pick up the
ricochet encryptions from either side, we should have an
unscrambled feed pretty instantaneously, and be ready to go back
up within five minutes, give or take depending on what part of the
comms cycle we catch them in."

Chief Boston looks up from the papers to Commander Neeman. "Go
down, observe, and return, is the entirety of our mission? We're
not actually setting foot inside the factory at any point?"

"No we are not. No need."

"You've reviewed this intelligence as well?"

"Yes, why?"

"All of it?"

"Yes," Commander Neeman says again, "Why do you ask?"

"Just wanting to make sure that if any hazards stood out to you, I
wouldn't miss them."

"No, nothing of the sort if we exercise CARE, and CAUTION. Stick
to the plan. Stick to the routes. And we'll be down and back
before lunch, and Earthlings will never have to think about this
exoplanet again."

-- -- --

Vaquero and I bounce around the air above the sea, nearby an oil
rig, in the Gulf of Mexico. Three dimensional fetch: we love it. I
bounce with my grav-pack and hurl the stick we brought, throwing
it towards the distant shore of Texas. Vaquero darts after it,
hitting the grav pulses again and again back to back, and snatches
the stick out of the air with his teeth. He then pivots and soars
up into the air above me, and drops the stick, sending it falling
to me. I catch it out of the air. He soars out away from me, and
then turns back and looks at me, coming forward now as slowly as
the grav-pack's propulsions will allow him, wagging, waiting for
me to throw the stick again. I throw it, this time towards Mexico.

That night in our guest quarters on the oil rig, I am in bed
reading a Sherlock Holmes adaptation, a romance novel where Holmes
and Watson are together. Vaquero has laid down with his tail end
near my head. He passed gas a little earlier, I heard the little
ptht and glanced over to see his tailhole pulse. And I'd be lying
if I said the smell of my partner didn't endear me to him, make my
affectionate feelings for him all come to the front of my mind, be
it the smell of his breath, the smell of his fur, or, sure, the
smell of his gas. The romance novel gets steamy. I set it down,
tilt my head over to Vaquero's tailhole, and give my pal's butt
some licks and smooches. Vaquero's tail wags; I can feel the base
of it rubbing against the side of my head.

-- -- --

"They must have changed the schema," Chief Boston says through the
comms. He keys his outgoing comms off after saying it, not wanting
to gum them up with his chattering teeth.

Commander Neeman asks once again, her voice impacted by shivering,
"You have the receptor dialed in to six, subbearing eighty one,
key A 4 4 A F 0 2 A 2 5?"

Chief Boston keys back on his outgoing comms and repeats the
information back, and says, "Yes. The blockage opacity goes down
to... ninety nine dot nine eight seven nine one, if I toss a
receptor over the boulder, closer to the factory, but to actually
go out there and get even that much, I would need to go into open
view."

There is silence on the comms for a moment.

-- -- --

I have flown us back out, after we have dropped off the large
portion of the passengers that we were able to get aboard
initially. I keep our craft going in a slow, lazy circle above the
Craigen wreckage. Every few minutes, Vaquero carries another
passenger up to me in his six robotic prehensile legs, drops them
off, and then dives back down to see if he can go fetch another. I
spend most of my time in the cargo hatch (now functioning as an
infirmary) and I tend to broken bones and burns, keeping one eye
on the data feed in the side of my goggles, that shows me a video
feed of what Vaquero sees, and allows me to butt in on his radar
readings. Through my mouthpiece that is connected to his earpiece,
I can let him know, "Heat signature, right, forty yards." And then
he turns right, and proceeds through the wreckage, nose sniffing
for the next one to fetch up.

-- -- --

Chief Boston and Commander Neeman both arrive at a small access
door into the arms factory. Both are breathing heavily, and have
opened the outer layers of their cold-weather clothing.

Commander Neeman says, "This should be MORE than close enough.
I'll stay here. You get around to the other side. And then we'll
get out of here. If you encounter ANY trouble along the way,
inject yourself, have Lim bring you back, and we'll try again
another time."

Chief Boston looks down at one of his radar instruments, points it
at Commander Neeman, and depresses a trigger on it.

Commander Neeman's comms cease to work, incoming or outgoing.

Commander Neeman goes on, "You get the plan?"

Chief Boston nods, walks past Commander Neeman as though to begin
going around the arms factory, and then as he passes her he takes
the marking injector from her jacket pocket, and instead of
continuing around the building he enters the small access door,
and locks it from inside.

-- -- --

I have woken up in the middle of the night, mouth and throat dry,
and no dog in my bed. I shamble out of bed and go down the stairs,
avoiding the parts of the stairs that creak, not wanting to wake
Vaquero, if he's gone down to fall asleep by himself on the couch,
for some odd reason (he and I almost always share a bed, but once
in a while he prefers the floor beside the bed, and so him
sleeping down on the couch is imaginable)

As I get to the bottom of the stairs, I can see, by the glowing
light of the oven and microwave clocks, that Vaquero is in the
kitchen, his front paws up on the counter, and he is licking the
stick of butter that I leave out for cooking, and he is intensely
happy to be doing so, savoring the flavor, loving it.

Later as the sun is rising we play fetch in the back yard, and
then when we come in, he uses his grav-pack to get up to my head
and start humping the back of my hair midair. I laugh, and let
myself fall down onto the ground, and there on the ground I drop
my drawers and let him grab me and breed me and form his tie with
me.

-- -- --

Chief Boston attempts to wipe the purple blood off of his left eye
as he makes it into the laboratory. A canid in the room begins
barking very loudly. Chief Boston looks around, spots the canid in
a cage, and runs forward towards the cage. On the way, Chief
Boston retrieves one of the marking injections from his jacket
pocket and removes the cap. At the cage, he reaches through the
bars of the cage with the injection, and injects the canid. Then,
using the other injection, he injects himself.

Chief Boston shouts through his comms, "EXTRACTION, BOTH MARKS."

In short order, the canid and Chief Boston vanish from the
Draather laboratory, and are then on the orbiting vessel Chief
Boston had come from.

-- -- --

"Draather," Master Amdi goes on, "after all of this disturbance,
do notice the orbiting vessel, and send a ship to recapture
Vaquero from you. Using the orbiting vessel's weaponry, you and
Lim eliminate the Draather crew from a distance."

"Easily."

"And then you see it fit not only to board this Draather vessel,
but in fact pilot it, directly, back to the holiest of holies,
Earth itself."

"I did a comprehensive sweep of the Draather vessel. There were no
unknowns."

"There were no unknowns THAT YOU FOUND," Master Amdi emphasizes.

I ask them, "Was anything present in the simulated ship that I
missed?"

They hold a scornful look on me, and then they answer, "No."

I say again, "I did a comprehensive sweep of the Draather vessel.
There were no unknowns."

"So at the end of this all, you do not accomplish the mission
objective. You have stranded your superior on a hostile planet,
almost certainly to die. And you have deserted."

I lean down to one of the red candles on the table, and chomp out
the flame with my teeth.

Master Amdi seems impressed.

I give them a real evil look, and I say to them, "We fight these
wars for our loved ones. You brought in the loved one, made
yourself an enemy against him, and now you act astonished that I
fought for him."

"You regret nothing."

"Not a single thing."

Master Amdi gestures for one of their personnel to come over, and
then takes an item from him. Master Amdi holds up, over the table
between us, the key to my handcuffs. The metal of it glimmers in
the light of all the candles.

Master Amdi says to me, "I think that a different assignment calls
to you, Chief Boston. You were indeed drafted for your skills as a
pilot, as we were in dire need of pilots. But you appreciate a
bigger picture. You cut to the bone and do not apologize. You are
heroic and sinister. And I think that you have many stories to
tell. I would very much like to have you as a member of my
council. You would be thirteenth councilperson."

I ignore the glimmering key that Master Amdi holds, and glare at
them, eye to eye, as though trying to mentally shoot a killing
laser into their head.

Master Amdi adds, "I would arrange for Vaquero to be brought here,
to cohabitate with you."

I continue to glare.

Master Amdi adds further, "He would see no combat at all."

There it is. Excellent.

I hold out my right hand over the table (I had already removed
both of my hands from the handcuffs, and was holding the handcuffs
under the table in my left hand.)

Master Amdi's officers all shuffle in place on their feet,
obviously perturbed by my magic trick.

Master Amdi is perplexed as well, but then sets down the handcuff
key, and reaches out and shakes my hand.




[3]

And in Dream I

W.J. (Waking Journal)

Today at work was hell. Stefan called in and Emile and Mariana
didn't cover, so there was no one forklift certified on the shift.
No shit we're not going to have any fork operators if they keep
firing them for finding any criminal record, everyone saw this
coming, everyone would take the guy who did time for trespassing
over having nobody at all. Lizzy had me doing work that's supposed
to be done with a forklift, with a pallet jack and a fucking
ladder. All day. All day, carrying stock up and down, item by
item, and then pulling it from one side of the building all the
way to the other. All day I was thinking, over and over again,
"Sleep cannot come soon enough." My feet were killing me, and I
started to have an ache in my left knee when I would go up the
ladder. My feet are better, kind of, now that I'm at home sitting
in bed and I can take the pressure off them. I just got home. I'm
going to take my sleeping pills and be in a better place.

D.J. (Dream Journal)

When I came into the dream, me and Love were having sex. We were
on our sides in bed. The bed was the bunk bed that my childhood
friend Kennidy had, and it was in his room too, except his room
was way-way-way bigger and had a forest inside of it. Me and Love
were on the top bunk, and the bed was a lot wider than it was in
real life, we had plenty of room up there for us. I was in my
furry coyote form, with a penis and balls, no breasts. Love was in
her furry german shepherd form, with a vagina, medium sized
breasts. As we laid there on our sides facing the same way, I was
slowly, savoring-ly, sliding my coyote penis in and out of her
human vag. We both tend to go animal for the male genitalia, human
for the female, when we're in our furry forms; not always, but it
seems to be that way a lot of the time. As we were having sex, I
had my muzzle-y coyote chin planted on her shoulder, slobbering on
her fur a little bit, and I was hugging her, reaching my arms
around her german shepherd-haired body to pet her tummy and grab
her boobs. When I had been in the dream for a while and savoring
it, we said while still having sex:

<3 -- "Your knot feels perfect."

|| -- "You feel perfect, my love. All of you. I can't get enough
of all of you. Your heat, your fur, your beautiful pointy ears. I
needed this."

<3 -- "I needed it just as much. Let it all out in me."

|| -- "I love you."

<3 -- "I need you."

I started to hump her faster, and was in love with her moans. I
began putting my fingers in her mouth as I humped her, pressing
her big canine tongue and feeling her strong canine teeth. At one
point I went to take my hand away from her mouth, and she grabbed
my hand and stuck it back in. Soon I was ready to finish, but
didn't want to yet, so I said:

|| -- "Let's switch."

I pulled my knot out of her, and she turned around so that we were
face to face on the bed, and then I gave myself a cunt that was
wet and needy and roaring to go, and she had a german shepherd
balls and sheath with a red tip sticking out of the end of the
sheath, and she licked my whiskers once and then pressed her
sheath against my cunt and started humping, and soon her penis was
sliding in and out of my front, and soon I could feel her knot
swelling. I spasmed with orgasm after orgasm and she filled me and
used me.

She fucked me for a really long time, and when she finished, I had
such an intense final orgasm around her knot, fatigued from
already cumming so much. That final orgasm consumed all of my
thoughts inside of it, my every thought was a climax of orgasm
from Love's swelled penis.

While she had me knotted, we spent a long time there, front to
front, catching our breath and looking at one another and running
our fingers across the hair on each other's faces and petting one
another's heads.

Eventually when we had caught our breath, we were having a chipper
conversation, while she was still knotted in my cunt. I forget a
lot of it, but a part I remember was:

<3 -- "Was work today really dumb?"

|| -- "It WAS, how did you guess?"

<3 -- "Pff. It's dumb every day."

|| -- "It really is just the worst."

<3 -- "I'm glad you're here right now and not there."

|| -- "Same. I'll take being knotted by you over basically
anything."

<3 -- "Even speedrunning Zelda?"

|| -- "I would never touch a video game again, if it was between
that and you leaking dog juice into me."

<3 -- "I didn't know you had THAT much of a hard-on for me."

|| -- "Love."

<3 -- "I know, I'm teasing. Mm, your puss feels so good."

|| -- "Your boner feels amazing."

She rolled her eyes when I said boner. I still haven't found out
what her preferred term is, I think it might be one I've already
tried and she's just toying with me.

When her knot slid out of me, we made out and drummed pats on each
other. Then Love said:

<3 -- "Let's run fast."

She and I became ferals and we leapt off of the bunk bed and began
running around through the woods that's in Kennidy's room. Most of
the time she's a german shepherd but is sometimes a cheetah; I am
a coyote about half of the time, and a stallion most of the rest
of the time, and occasionally a colt.

W.J.

Work today was fine. It sucked, but it was fine, relatively. I was
scanning boxes and putting the stickers on them. It sounds easy,
but a lot of times the barcodes don't scan until I really work the
laser around on them for a while, and then, after I put on even
like 10 stickers, the adhesive started to really pull away the
skin on my fingertips. Not visibly, for the most part, but it
feels like that, it felt like my skin is being ripped off with
every label. But, compared to other tasks, not complaining.

D.J.

When I came into the dream, me and Love were grilling veggies on a
grill at our beach-adjacent mansion house. The sunlight felt
serene on my fur and on my face and shoulders. I was a furry
coyote wearing a black tanktop and black underwear, I had a cunt
and no boobs. Love was a furry cheetah and had a vagina and no
breasts, she was wearing black sweatpants and a hawaiian shirt and
had a lei hanging from her neck. I don't remember very much about
what we were grilling, other than that it was vegetables on the
grill and that they smelled delicious as they cooked. I mainly
remember just having a pure feeling of serenity, happiness,
contentment, peace, joy, at being there with her.

Later on, me and Love were down at the beach, standing on the
water as the sun was setting, and playing catch with a baseball,
throwing it back and forth to one another. Our throws were great,
heavy and accurate, and I don't remember either of us ever having
to run or jump to be able to make a catch, I just remember her
throws landing perfectly, smacking into my hand, and then I would
throw it back.

The last part before I woke up was that me and her went under the
water. We could breathe like we were still in air, and the water
was hot, like we were in a hot tub. We could have our eyes open
too. And so we were there on the sand under the water, smiling at
each other, and I was running my fingers through the wet cheetah
hair on her face, and I was wagging.

W.J.

My biggest desire is to go to sleep and never wake up again. There
is the real world that the love of my life dwells in where I can
be my real forms and enjoy my real pleasures. Then I am cursed to
wake up, and be stuck in the same body forever and do made up work
so that somebody's make believe spreadsheet makes them look good
to their boss, and then that boss can look good to their boss, and
so on. I long for eternity covered in fur and with my love, where
the notion of moving product around is a distant memory from an
old, long-disintegrated world.

D.J.

When I came into the dream, I was walking around in a library. The
library wasn't one I had ever been in before, I was visiting
somewhere new. The library was huge, with stairways going up and
down, crisscrossing to different floors, now and then I had to
walk through an open courtyard, and the green grass in the lawns
wavered in the summer heat. Eventually I peered around a shelf,
and there in a little reading area with a few tables was my old
friend Mark. He was alive again, his tattoo sleeves looked super
sharp, like he had gotten them touched up recently.

`{ -- "I'm gonna sell my car. I never even use it, it's easier to
get around on the subway anyways, so I think, sell the car,
reinvest the money. I'll take a bus if I ever need to go out of
town for something."

He drives that car all the time, so this didn't sound like a great
plan to me, but I didn't really say anything about his business, I
continued along through the library.

W.J.

Mariana asked today when we were walking to the break room if I'm
married. I told her no. I thought about mentioning my love, but
she went on to talk about how not getting married is smart of me,
her first marriage just wasn't what a partnership should be, her
second husband who she's still with is much better, but marriage
isn't something you need to rush into. I nodded along and didn't
really comment.

D.J.

When I came into the dream, me and Love were standing on the beach
at our mansion house, in the sunset. She was touching my face,
licking her german shepherd fingertips and smoothing down parts of
my coyote face hair. She adjusted the sash that I was wearing. I
was wearing black formal pants and a rich blue collared shirt, and
had a black sash to represent work I had recently done feeding the
hungry. Love was wearing a black dress that had a streak of blue
going across the front, it looked like someone had tossed a
handful of powdered blue chalk diagonally across the front of her
dress. Sometimes when I looked at her again it was the same idea,
a black outfit with the streak of blue chalk, but she was wearing
black pants and a black collared shirt.

<3 -- "We're ready."

There on the beach in the sunset, we hugged, and then when we
parted we were inside the entrance of a restaurant where we were
meeting my old friend Mark and Crystal, his mom.

<3 -- "Snookums!"

I follow the sound of Love's voice, and see that she is standing
by a waitress and needs me to come follow them. The waitress, a
human, leads us through the restaurant around corner after corner,
until we arrive at Mark and Crystal. When we sit down at the table
we learn that Mark and Crystal have already picked out what me and
Love are going to order. Me and Love share looks with one another,
acknowledging without saying anything that that was rude of them
to decide without us, but then me and Love also kind of start
sharing smiles with one another, acknowledging without saying
anything that this is part of the fun of having rude friends, that
later on the drive home we're going to have so much to laugh at
about with each other. In some ways we wouldn't have it any other
way.

I had a really tasty rootbeer and tried some of Love's strawberry
soda and liked it. I remember that we all had a really long and
detailed conversation, and all throughout Crystal was really funny
and also made a lot of really good points.

The only part I remember specifically doesn't illustrate that
entirely, but it was:

`{ -- "You don't even need strings and a neck to play guitar like
the real famous guitarists do. Just hang a sheet off of a line,
and bat on it with some sticks."

<3 -- "Ugh, you would."

`{ -- "I'm not even wrong, try it, record it analog, play Van
Halen side by side by side by side with it and you won't know the
difference."

<3 -- "Preposterous."

`{ -- "Try it with your napkin and knife."

<3 -- "Shush. Enough about that. Who is everyone's favorite
guitarist, like, actual guitarist?"

I think about a time me and Love were in the jungle and there was
a stage made of yellow blocks of stone and everyone in the
audience and on the stage was an animal, hyenas and foxes and some
bears looming over us who were meandering around through the
crowds of us smaller animals, and some rats scurrying around lower
than us. The foxes on the stage were batting their instruments
with their front paws, it came out sounding thrilling and
beautiful. When the guitarist fox began his guitar solo he started
pouncing all around the instrument, scratching at it with his
forepaws and kicking it with his hindpaws as he leapt across it
again and again, and that was my favorite guitarist I've ever
heard, no contest. I give a glance to Love as we sit there at the
table in the restaurant, and she squeezes my arm in her hands and
gives my cheek a little kiss, she knows this is the guitarist who
I'm thinking of.

/^ -- "Back in Duluth, well, actually this would have been a
little bit outside of Duluth, but, that's where I was living at
the time. I was seventeen, I had a fake ID, and I was the warrior
empress of the whole wide world, I thought back then. I was in a
bar that I wasn't supposed to be in, and I saw this man on the
stage, and I never caught his name, but it was him up there with a
guitar, and he was doing fun songs, lively but invisible things
that people were having their own conversations over, I wasn't
even paying much attention to him really. But then he started
playing this different song, and it was like he had become an
angel. And his guitar was like he had started plucking harp for a
queen. And suddenly, he had that entire bar wrapped around his
finger. And that man, whatever his name was, that's my favorite."

|| -- "Oh wow, that's amazing. It's really cool that you got to be
there for that."

/^ -- "Oh excuse me, I know I was supposed to answer Eddie Vedder
or something like that, not tell you about this bar from a long
time ago that you can't look up."

<3 -- "No, no! Our favorite guitarist is a really long story."

Mark has his hand raised in front of himself.

<3 -- "Yes, Mark?"

`{ -- "Try the sticks."

That really is so Mark, to be so convinced of something that no
one else has heard about. I don't know whether or not in the dream
it would have worked if any of us tried it.

Afterwards me and Love were out behind the restaurant, just the
two of us. It was nighttime and we could only see by the light of
the orange-yellow-ish tall parking lot lights, but we weren't even
right under those, we were kind of over by the dumpster.

<3 -- "I want to show you these gem rings I got on my last
adventure."

Love took four rings out of her pocket, one of them had a gem on
it that was bluegreen, another green, another yellow, and the last
one red.

Love put the yellow one onto my middle finger, and I felt a heavy
golden crown appear on my head, and heavy gold bracelets and
anklets.

I took it off, and put on the red one instead, and then I looked
down at my hands and saw I had red fur, black and white striped
demon claws, fire spouting out at points on my wrists. I took the
red gem ring off too.

Love put on the bluegreen ring on one hand and the green ring on
the other hand, and then she looked like a really small weeping
willow tree.

|| -- "Thank you for showing these to me."

<3 -- "I trust you, you know?"

It was a really good night for us, I really liked it.

W.J.

Ran a bunch of errands today, mostly just miscellaneous bits of
shopping, it was a nice day out, warm and sunny with a breeze that
would roll through now and then, and I enjoyed driving around. I
ran into Lucy in line at the Panda Express, she still lives in the
apartment building from when I first moved here although I forget
the name of it again. She invited me to a neighborhood cookout a
couple days from now, and I plan on going, I think it'll be nice
to see some of those people again. At home I played around with
Ocarina of Time a bit, playing around with Bombchus to see what
happens releasing them outside of the areas and stuff like that,
what kinds of collision are out there and how they react to that.

D.J.

When I came into the dream, I was sitting on a couch in me and
Love's beach mansion, facing the black face of an off flat screen
TV, as sunlight shined in through the window beside me. I stood
up, and walked down the hall, and looked into one of our guest
bedrooms. There on the neatly made bed, sunlight shining in past
the thin curtains, I saw Love in her furry german shepherd form
with a dog penis and a series of breasts going down her chest. She
had her penis in hand, masturbating, and she continued to pleasure
herself as she looked up at me. I was in my furry black lab form,
which I realized I had not been in for a while. I had a cunt and
pair of breasts. I went onto the bed, and began sucking on Love's
penis, now and then stopping to suck on her breasts. I was happily
lost for a long time in the euphoria of her belly warmth, her sex
tastes, her dog smells. Eventually as I continued to suck on her,
she used a hand to pleasure my pussy, rubbing the outside, running
her fingers along me in a way that was just perfect, it was just
what the moment needed to become perfect.

W.J.

The men's room at work had some kind of plumbing issue, and
everyone has to use the women's room now. It's absurd how freaked
out everyone is by this. It's as though the apocalypse has been
heralded. They put out a table by the entrance with two cards that
you can flip over as you enter and exit. One says OCCUPIED /
VACANT, the other says MAN / WOMAN. You were only supposed to go
in if it was vacant, or if the gender card matched you. Towards
the end of the day Lizzy went around saying that they had changed
it from the card, to just having it so that each hour, guys can
use the restroom from 0 - 14, girls from 15 - 29, guys from 30 -
44, and girls from 45 - 59.

D.J.

When I came into the dream, me and Love and another furry we had
just met while out for a walk were all at the beach at our mansion
house, bumping a volleyball around between ourselves. It reminded
me of that game as a kid, Don't Let The Balloon Touch The Floor. I
was a furry black lab again, this time with a penis that had the
tip coming out of the sheath a little as we played, balls, no
breasts, no pants, no shirt, and a harness made of light blue
straps, complete with a matching blue collar. Love was in her
furry german shepherd form, vagina, breasts, no pants, a t-shirt
with a Smashing Pumpkins album cover on the front, although
sometimes when I look again it's a Green Day album cover or once
it was Neutral Milk Hotel. She had a canine vulva this time, which
isn't very common when she's in a furry form, I usually only see
that on her when she's on all fours, but she looked great with it,
there in her cool music tees, in the sunlight, playing volleyball
with us. The other furry, who we had just met a bit ago, was a
white rabbit, flat chest, I don't know other details because he
was fully clothed the entire time, wearing jeans with rips in the
knees, and a t-shirt that was a concert tee for some metal band.
He had a pierced jowl and a row of piercing across one eyebrow,
and had studs all around his long ears. I had never gotten the
rabbit's name earlier, and I intended to bring it up with Love
later, because I think she had gotten it but I'd missed it.

I remember now and then my stomach grumbled, but I wasn't hungry,
and we all kept playing, and it was a lot of fun, it was a good
time.

W.J.

There is often no conclusion in dreams, other than waking up.
Sometimes it ends on a moment of climax, a bright flash or a
sudden impact that startles me awake, but often times things are
in the middle of happening, and then the dream ends. This is not
too much in contrast of the waking world. Often things happen, and
then life goes on, without any moment of climax, without any
definitive resolution. Sometimes there is climax: a graduation to
end schooling, a car crash to end your time spent with a vehicle,
and of course there is the big moment, death.

From a materialist perspective, it is likely that when I die in
the waking world, I will never dream again. My brain will cease to
have the energy it needs to create an experience of reality for
me, the energy required being the same whether I am waking or
dreaming. Eventually, or, depending on how I die, perhaps
immediately, my brain would no longer even have the structures
needed even if it did have the energy again. The parts of the
brain that invoke sensory experiences would decompose, or be eaten
by wild animals, or get smeared across the road after I was hit by
a bus, or whatever the case may be, but, I am not so famous that
someone would preserve my brain in a jar, try everything to get it
working again some day in the future.

From a spiritual perspective, it is likely that when I die in the
waking world, I will be sent off to an eternity in dreams. The
afterlife, whether Heaven or some other thing, feels, in my heart
of hearts, like it would be very dream-like. I would no longer
have any fixed obligations, no damnation to a single fixed body, I
would be free from the laws of space and time, I could be with
Love and everyone I've ever cared for and new friends who I
haven't met yet and we could experience all of the things that we
would ever dream of, endlessly. Death in the waking world could,
from a spiritual perspective, be the best thing that ever happens
to me.

From a practical perspective, I don't know whether materialism or
spirituality is correct. I don't know what will happen after my
heart has beat for the last time, and the lights have gone out.
But I know that right now, by serving the waking world, I am every
night turned over to dreams. I know for a fact that continuing to
wake is a way of continuing to dream. It's something that was on
my mind today. That maybe there is solace in waking, for the fact
that every time there is one more day, there will be one more
night, and I will get to dream.




[4]

Twenty Thousand Units Down

From Viper (QA TEAM G COORDINATOR)
To Iota (DEV)

Do you have the documentation for the room below level 4? One of
my testers was noclipping below the level and found the room, none
of us knew it existed until today when she found it and asked
about it. We don't know of a way to access the room by ordinary
in-game means, but the contents of the room are definitely a
concern.

From Iota (DEV)
To Viper (QA TEAM G COORDINATOR)

What?

From Viper (QA TEAM G COORDINATOR)
To Iota (DEV)

There is a hidden room below ancient_templ that has contents
themed around bestiality. It appears on today's build and
yesterday's, we don't currently have any builds older than that
installed, but I can say it's appearing on all of my testers'
machines, this room is in the game. Do you have any documentation
on how this room is meant to be accessed, and if we're allowing
this kind of content into the game? It would be helpful to know
what our considerations should be here.

From Iota (DEV)
To Viper (QA TEAM G COORDINATOR)

I didn't know about this at all. Get a full report made about
this.

From Viper (QA TEAM G COORDINATOR)
To Team G Channel

Okay Geese! We are going to get a report compiled regarding this
room that Hammer found. Ace and Thimble, please scour the level
for any way to access this room as a player, currently we only
know how to get there by noclipping, but it would be great to have
an idea as to whether this room can be accessed by ordinary means.
Everyone else, go into this room, just a reminder that it is
20,000 units below the center of the level, you won't see it at
first as you're noclipping down, but it will come into view once
you get close enough. Please add to the following thread with any
details you find about what's going on in there, whether they seem
obvious or hidden, we just want a full breakdown of what this room
appears to be. Descriptions, screenshots, item IDs, everything you
can provide is helpful.

Hammer will be writing the report for this. We're going to group
everything about this room into one report. This is our top
priority right now, drop everything else we had planned for today.

From Pie (QA TEAM G TESTER)
To Viper (QA TEAM G COORDINATOR)

I fuckin love this room I would fuck the shit out of this entire
room

From Viper (QA TEAM G COORDINATOR)
To Pie (QA TEAM G TESTER)

Fuck's sake, are you drunk at 9 AM?

From Pie (QA TEAM G TESTER)
To Viper (QA TEAM G COORDINATOR)

I'm allowed faggot

From Viper (QA TEAM G COORDINATOR)
To Pie (QA TEAM G TESTER)

Well, I am gay, you have got me there.

Report 1139 - ancient_templ hidden room with questionable contents
Author - Hammer

Navigate to the apparent center of ancient_templ. Enable noclip
mode. Proceed straight downwards. After proceeding approximately
500 units below the level, a distant entity will become visible.
Continue downwards towards the entity, which is located 20,000
units below the level. Upon arriving at this entity, it will
become apparent that this is a room with several features that
center around bestiality / zoophilia / zoosexuality .

The room is cubic in dimensions, and aligned with compass
directions. Walls are all txtr_33 , floor is flr_8 , ceiling is
txtr_1 .

In the southeast corner, dog model d0g_3 is seen in an animation
mounting and humping dog model d0g_1 , while beside them, d0g_3
humps villager model vg_h_2 . Alterations have not been made to
these models to include genitals or to remove clothes; in both
couplings, this is effectively an act of dry humping, with no
actual penetration visible. Bestiality is a salient word for this
scene.

On the north wall is text that matches something referred to as
The Zeta Principles . Zoophiles are known to use these pseudo
"laws" to ethically justify the act of bestiality, or, a human
having sex with an animal. The text appears in Times New Roman,
centered alignment.

In the middle of the room, several phallic shapes appear, "tips"
pointed upwards towards the ceiling. These objects have no pre-
defined item IDs, and appear to be rendered after the level has
loaded. There appear to be 11 phallic objects resembling canine
penises ( penis , dick , cock , wiener , boner , hard-on , hardon,
hard on ), 1 phallic object resembling an equine ( horse ,
stallion ) penis, and 1 phallic object which may be suidae ( pig
).

Against the west wall of the room are framed pictures, using the
picture frame models pfrm_1 , pfrm_2 , pfrm_3 , and pfrm_4 . The
pictures appear to be recreations of mostly historic /
mythological examples of bestiality. From left to right, they
appear to be depictions of Leda and the Swan, The Dream of the
Fisherman's Wife, a depiction of a cave painting featuring
bestiality although it is unclear if this is referencing a
specific real-life cave painting, and finally there is an example
of cartoon furry pornography ( porn , yiff ) where a bipedal (
anthro ) fox uses his penis to penetrate a quadrupedal ( feral )
golden retriever vaginally, though QA has not been able to
determine an extant source for this image after using the search
features of a handful of popular furry websites / databases.

On the ground in the southwest corner are three interactable /
readable objects, each using the book_2 model. All three when
interacted with display the text of guides on how to have sex with
different animals, which appear to be copied from existing guides
from the internet. The southmost book teaches how to have sex with
female dogs ( bitch , bitches ), the next book northwards teaches
how to have sex with dolphins, and the northmost book teaches how
to have sex with male dogs ( stud , studs ).

It is uncertain to QA whether the contents of this room are legal
to publish, including depictions of bestiality, directions on how
to perform bestiality, and writings justifying bestiality.

QA has not currently found a method of accessing this room without
noclip. The only way to enter the room appears to be through cheat
codes, though it must be emphasized that QA has received no
documentation on this room, and so if there is an intended way to
enter the room by ordinary means, QA may have missed it so far.

Screenshots of the room are attached to this report for QA
purposes.

From Iota (DEV)
To Dev Channel

What the fuck is this?

From Mustache (DEV)
To Dev Channel

looooooool

From Wedge (DEV)
To Dev Channel

loooooooooooool

From Iota (DEV)
To Dev Channel

When I find out who did this I am either buying them lunch or
googling how to hide a dead body, I haven't quite decided yet.

From Pavement (DEV)
To Dev Channel

lololololol

From Iota (DEV)
To Dev Channel

Seriously who did this? We're going to look at the commit records
and find out when (and by whom) the code was added. You might as
well come clean and say it was a joke that you didn't think anyone
would notice. This wasn't ever discussed as something that was
supposed to be included in the game.

From Viper (QA TEAM G COORDINATOR)
To Hammer (QA TEAM G TESTER)

Really good work today, thank you.

From Hammer (QA TEAM G TESTER)
To Viper (QA TEAM G COORDINATOR)

Thanks for saying so. I uh, am not really disturbed by these kinds
of contents. I just struggle to know what's okay to say
professionally.

From Viper (QA TEAM G COORDINATOR)
To Hammer (QA TEAM G TESTER)

You did great, the balance was perfect.

From Ace (QA TEAM G TESTER)
To Thimble (QA TEAM G TESTER)

Oh my fucking god there's another room

From Thimble (QA TEAM G TESTER)
To Ace (QA TEAM G TESTER)

no

From Ace (QA TEAM G TESTER)
To Thimble (QA TEAM G TESTER)

Go another 20,000 units below the bestiality room we've already
been looking at

From Thimble (QA TEAM G TESTER)
To Ace (QA TEAM G TESTER)

NO

Report 1140 - ancient_templ 2nd hidden bestiality room
Author - Ace

Directly related to Report 1139, there is a hidden room 40,000
units below the center of ancient_templ. This room is cubic in
shape, and features a villager model ( vg_h_5 ) playing a banjo
while sitting on a chair in the center of the room. Surrounding
him, several villager models from the game can be seen mounting
and humping various animal models from the game. Full list of
models and animations is attached to this report.

Like the room detailed in Report 1139, there is no known way to
access this room by ordinary means.

From Iota (DEV)
To Dev Channel

One of you fuckers is getting fired.

From Crimson (DEV)
To Dev Channel

This is the best thing that has ever happened.

From Hot Lava (IT)
To Iota (DEV)

So, this news is going to be kinda brutal for someone, most
likely. I was able to find out that this code was added to the
game alongside the addition of one of the horse models, hors_6.
This horse model features kind of different approaches to geometry
compared to the other horse models, and so I did some digging, and
it turns out that this horse model appears to be mmmmmostly copied
from a fan mod of the previous game. Like, the fan model was
copied, and then a few details were changed, maybe to make it look
like it wasn't copied. And, trojan'd into that fan model, was all
of this stuff that made the hidden rooms appear in ancient_templ.
I don't know half of how they actually pulled that off, I would
check if other levels have the same rooms added, because them
being able to include injection code for level IDs they couldn't
have known makes no sense.

But. Yeah.

Someone on the dev team seems to have been copying off of a fan's
work, and that fan was way too clever.

From Iota (DEV)
To Viper (QA TEAM G COORDINATOR)

Does the same room appear below any other levels?

From Viper (QA TEAM G COORDINATOR)
To Iota (DEV)

...Yes, the same room appears below twenty out of twenty other
levels we just looked at based on this.

From Iota (DEV)
To Mustache (DEV)

IT informed me that you committed hors_6 into the game. Did you do
this, to the best of your memory?

From Mustache (DEV)
To Iota (DEV)

Yes, I originally modeled hors_6 as a fan project, before I was
hired onto the team officially. Why?

From Iota (DEV)
To Mustache (DEV)

The commit for hors_6 was the source of this room being added to
the game. After the model data, it included more data that would
add the room below any level that the hors_6 model was loaded
into. Did you put that in there, back when you were a fan, as some
kind of joke?

From Mustache (DEV)
To Iota (DEV)

Oh my god I'm not nearly funny enough to have thought to do that.
Did it really get in from hors_6?

From Iota (DEV)
To Mustache (DEV)

Fuck's sake.

End Of Shift Report
Author - Iota

Removing hors_6 from the game due to QA reports identifying severe
issues with the model. Future compiles should omit hors_6 model.




[5]

Fuck yeah

I saw a spider