Tali opened up her eyes rather slowly, looking over her shoulder at one of the windows in her cabin, a smile passing over her lips seeing that the storm had passed the islands, and the usual bright sun had returned. She purred a little, stretching out from head to tow, flailing her tail around behind her as every muscle and joint in her body made their morning protest. She sat up on the edge of the bed, pawing idly through her bushy tail. The night had treated her well, and she slept like a baby, awakening only once during the night to bury herself under a couple flimsy sheets. 

She rubbed her eyes a bit and yawned. Remembering the evening beforehand, and what she had done before she went to bed, a long shower seemed to be a good idea. Working herself off the bed and arranging the covers a bit, she padded over towards the stove, putting a kettle of water on for tea, then padded back around the room, picking up her discarded clothing and arranging a bit before heading into the shower, letting the warm water run through her fur like warm fingers, soaking her lush pelt down, making it heavy but clean. 

She stepped out of the shower when the kettle went off, running out to the stove naked and dripping, fumbling to turn it off. She smiled a bit as the gas burner died out, and the incessant whistling of the teakettle stopped with it. She padded back into the shower, finishing the job she had started, emerging from the bathroom a couple minutes later with a towel wrapped from her chest downwards. She poured herself a cup of tea, padding over towards the window and looking out. 

The island was very beautiful after the rains...there were a few plants that were battered and wilting, but the majority of them were used to this kind of treatment. The bay was almost glowing, a bright blue hue to it rather than the greenish hue some bodies of seawater tend to take on. She smiled gently and took a sip of her tea, smiling a little as she got an idea. 

Her towel dropped around her feet wetly, and she stepped out of it, shaking herself off a little, her tail twitching around. She was still a bit wet, but figured that wouldn’t last very long in the morning sun. It had been a long time since she had been able to be naked in public, and she stepped out to greet the day in only the fur she was born with, every bit of sunshine hitting her features, soaking them with their heat to the core. Her pelt wasn’t the best suited for being out in the sun, as she had alot of black on her, but she grew used to it after awhile, having more white fur on her than most skunks did. Her tail was triple-striped with white that started from her scalp and continued down her back and onto her tail, her belly and face the same snowy white color. Her feet and hands were also "socked" in white, her hair long and white, tied back in a ponytail around the base of her neck, the long strands continuing down and ending at the small of her back. 

By all accounts, she was a beauty, but she would have never known it. She’d grown up too much of her life looking homely and odd, and never identified with the crowd that was obsessed about their bodies. On this particular day however, she let herself enjoy what she had, allowing herself to bask in the sun and dry out, the cool breeze felt all over her fur, sliding up between her legs and across her chest, where it all too often didn’t go. It was an exhilarating experience that pulled a few memories of childhood from Tali’s mind. 

She recalled those ten years she spend in the midlands, with her mother and all their animals. They lived on a small mini-farm out in the middle of nowhere. The whole farm was only five acres with a small barn, but the endless woods around them is where she spent most of her time. She’d run around in the woods and play games with herself, exploring all around the property, learning about nature firsthand. Her mother always worried that Tali would someday go fauve, but the most that ever happened is that Tali would go unclothed during the summer months, playing around in the woods around her home. Nothing ever came of it, but it did follow her later on in life. She learned to survive well on her own, but never really developed the social skills that she would have had if she had lived in a city, or even a small town. 

High School didn’t treat her all that well. She was a bit awkward, and certainly not one of the "desirable species," even though she was a purebred amongst mostly mutts. Seemed that the countryside had a way of mixing people up as far as genes went, but left them untouched mentally. She was continually prodded and laughed at her first three years, and she got more and more used to threatening to spray someone if they did something she did not like. 

She almost delighted in torturing the city folks when she got to college. She had since blossomed out into a very attractive young woman, and because of her fauve tendencies, would walk through the halls of her dorm naked from time to time. She’d never go really far, maybe just to the other side of the dorm, but it was still enough to put the city kids on their heads. Sasha, who was her roommate all throughout college, warned her not to go around like that too much, lest one of the males get an idea in his head and ambush her one day. Tali didn’t care. It was all that much closer to freedom for her, as even then, she missed the freedom that the woods afforded. The city just wasn’t as mentally stimulating as the countryside was. The possible price seemed small compared to the freedom that it afforded.
 

Tali smiled a bit to herself, and padded off her porch, leaving her cabin and clothes behind as she walked down towards the beach, her feet kicking up a bit of sand wherever she saw it.
 

The water was as deep of a blue as it could get.  The whole bay was absolutely untainted, in sharp contrast to the crowded beaches on the mainland. She smiled a bit and padded out into the water, letting some of the cool liquid pass through her toes as she wiggled them around. The warmth of the sun had already seeped down inside the sands, catching on some of the larger granules, the warmth of them felt even through her thick pelt.
 

She turned around to look out towards the bay, her purple eyes scanning over the blue waters as the wind picked it up in spots, tossing the waves around from time to time. Tali had never really been around the water that much, being a mainlander most of her life. She would occasionally go to the beaches on the coastline, or sometimes even go to a resort like WaterWings with Sasha, but those times got rarer and rarer as she starting to find her niche in McNaughton.
 

"Rains certainly do wonders to the view, don’t they?" A voice sounded off at her.. She turned around, catching her gaze on David again, his huge form clothed only in a pair of swimming trunks, a tan towel wrapped around his neck. He took one look at her and blushed, staring at his toes. He was at least six-foot-five...if not more. And quite built. Normally, bears had a tendency to be rather fat, but this one was all muscle. "Military." Tali mused the thought around in her head, seeming to be able to sniff out who was in what profession. No one gets that toned unless they are in sport, the military, or are extremely narcissistic. 

Tali flicked her tail a bit, turning around.
 

"Oops. Sorry. I thought you were wearing one of those dental-floss bikinis. I didn’t realize you were..uhm." David searched for the words.
 

"Nude. Naked. In the fur." Tali smiled gently, hoping a bit of humor would make him look back up. It didn’t, as he just flushed more. "Hey, it’s ok. You city folks aren’t too used to it, I guess. I used to live in the country, so it’s pretty normal for me...although I don’t do it too much anymore. I can cover up, if you want me to. My cabin is just up the path. But I don’t mind if you look."
 

David looked up. "Well..allright. If you say so, then. Did you sleep well last night?"
 

Tali smiled knowingly. "Much better than I expected, thanks. It was very nice of you to check in on me like that last night. That lightning scared me to death."
 

"Yeah, I know the feeling. I felt the same way." David smiled a little bit, moving towards the water. "Saw your laptop last night. I hope you didn’t plug it in?"
 

Tali flushed. Of course she did. She, being the know-it-all kid genius that she was, thought she was above God, above the lightning that pounded down on her. She was invincible. Of course, her laptop now resembled modern art.
 

"Uhm...actually...I did. Needless to say, I won’t be using it this trip." Tali stammered a bit and kicked at the sand. Among tech-heads, it was considered a mark against you if you admitted you were wrong outright.
 

"Gads. Sorry to hear it. Ahwell...means you’ll have more time to enjoy your stay here." David looked around a bit, then nodded to the water. "Going for a swim?" he asked.
 

"No no...just came down to kick around at the beach a bit, get the sand back in my toes, if you know what I mean." Tali chuckled a bit, kicking a bit of sand around. "I’ll sink like a rock if I swim. It’s this tail, you see. Once the fur gets wet, it acts like an anchor."
 

David smiled knowingly and padded down the beach, dropping his towel on the last bit of dry sand and breaking off in a dead run towards the beach, flinging himself at the water as he got in hip-deep, paddling his way out into the bay.
 

Tali smiled a bit, watching him start to swim away, admiring how he could glide through the water with ease. She always had a hard time with it, her tail being so large, it always got waterlogged. She turned around and headed for the lodgehouse, her nose picking up the scent of breakfast. She walked a little faster.
 

The lodge was quite quiet this time of day...Tali’s watch had stopped working the night before because of the lightning, but she guessed it to be around seven-thirty or so in the morning. She walked in, still a little nervous about walking in the fur around city folks, but at this time of day, it didn’t really matter. She quickly found a payphone and picked up the receiver, dialing the number for work.
 

A low male voice answered the phone. "McNaughton Industries, how may I direct your call?"
 

Tali cursed a bit. They may be the biggest software vendor on the mainlands, but they certainly didn’t keep even their phones up to date. This should have been a computer. "Put me through to Nikolas King." The line clicked, showing she had been transferred over.
 
 

Nikolas was Tali’s boss, in a way. He was a six foot tiger morph that really looked intimidating on the outside, but was a real kitten on the inside. In fact, Tali kept on referring to him as her "kitten," which enraged him a little bit, but she could usually just give him a scritch behind the ears, and he would be agreeable again. A rather nice relationship, really. She got what she needed done, and he got scritches. Fair ‘nuff.
 

The phone picked up. "Nikolas." The voice on the other end sounded like it had just gone through hell and back....and brought souvenirs.
 

Tali smiled. "Kitten! How is?" She grinned, imagining Nikolas rolling his eyes.
 

"Not too bad, had better days. This place really depends on you, I have to admit." Nikolas sighed a bit, just like the micromanaged serf that he really was, tired and fed up with all the corporate bullshit. But Tali didn’t know that. No. Totally lost the signal. She was never good with that kind of stuff.
 

"Oh - well, if you need someone, I could just take my vacation later and fly up on the next plane..." she was cut off mid-sentence by Nikolas, who was bellowing loudly.
 

"You never have learned to just relax and enjoy it, have you? Well. We don’t need you that bad, and I’d rather see you get out from under all that has been happening for awhile. So how’s Max doing?"
 

Max was the code name for their AI computer. The one that had burned to a crisp the night before. It didn’t stand for anything fancy, as Tali always cringed at the mere mention of the word acronym. She worked for the government before, enough was enough. When you could, and did, say a sentence in nothing but acronyms and a few joining adverbs, you knew it was time to go.
 

"Uhm...actually...that’s what I needed to call you about. I think we need to take a look at the sensors attached to the AC power unit." Tali muttered a bit, her feet shuffling on the ground nervously.
 

"And why is that? Is it not regulating voltage like it should?" Nikolas prodded a bit. He always listened to what Tali had to say, but he also probed her for every bit of information. Just like a predator.
 

"You could say that. It kinda blew up last night. Big power spike. I think the unit needs to be looked at. It should have protected itself when it detected the surge at the stage one couplers." Tali winced a bit, fully expecting the tiger on the other end to go nuts.
 

"...   ....   ....  Ohwell. It’s just one prototype of four. We’ll just use the other ones until we have the funding to buy another model." Nikolas brushed it off without a second thought.
 

Tali blinked, but just swallowed it with a smile. "Ok. Is it possible to get a new one sent out here so I can do some work from the cabin at night? I need to do some coding on the personality module. I think it’s got some residual ghosts that we need to take care of."
 

"Probably not. We don’t have the funding for it." Nikolas could be heard shifting pages on the other side of the phone.
 

Tali blinked yet again. No funding? Christ. They HAD a 500 million dollar budget. It was a government contract. They had to have the money. If not, they could just leach some in. "Cripe, Nick. What the hell did you do with all the cash? Go and surround yourself with expensive Geisha girls? Buy the entire division luxury cars?" Tali giggled a bit into the phone. Nick didn’t.
 

"Tali, hon.. ...   ...  ...They cut the project. A couple days before you left. No one said anything because they wanted you to enjoy your vacation." Nick sounded as serious as could be.
 

Tali’s jaw dropped, her tail flopping against the floor, raising a bit of dust. Five hundred million dollar project, and they all of a sudden kill it like that? "Nick, what the hell? This is a joke, right? Ha-ha. Very funny. Now out with it."
 

Nick sighed heavily, the slight crackle of the phone line emphasizing it. "Tali...I’m not kidding. Max mouthed off at the president. It seems we needed to tone down the personality module a bit. He flipped his lid. He refused to have a loudmouthed computer talk to him while he was trying to defend the country. It got scrapped the next day. I about had a heart attack in that meeting. I knew it was a bad idea to showcase a beta project, but you know the project directors.."
 

Tali put her head in her paws, shaking her head gently. "Shit. Oh lord. I found that out last night. Max lipped off to me a little bit...nothing serious, but..damn. What are we going to do with the old prototypes....we could put it into a commercial.."
 

Tali was cut off yet again. "Tali. They’re gone. they demanded that we erase all disks with the source code for Max on them, and that we destroy any evidence that he ever existed. We substituted a similar laptop for the one you had so the feds were happy. I wanted to keep at least one copy of the source code...even if I had to put it under my mattress." Nick sounded somber.
 

Tali just stood there in utter shock. Not only was her whole reason for being for the last two years gone, but the last remnant that she ever did anything important was also gone, sitting in a deformed heap in the cabin.
 

Nick spoke up. "Tali, I want you to stay in the Happenstance islands. I talked to Sylvia there, and she said she’d do everything she could to make you comfortable. I suggest you enjoy it while you have it. I’ll have a new job for you when you get back. They’re moving us all to different projects."
 

"Well...I’ll try. I don’t quite know how, but I’ll try. Thanks, kitten." Tali smiled a bit, wiping back a tear as she hung up the receiver. She walked out of the lodge, her tail dragging along the ground all the way back to her cabin.
 

Tali put a pair of loose jean shorts and a purple t shirt on, not feeling in the mood to go au naturale anymore. She walked over to her burned out laptop, poking at it and sighing heavily. "I don’t know how long I toiled over that thing, and now it’s completely gone. All of it. Everything I ever lived for."
 

Tali growled loudly, nailing the laptop across the room, sending it careening against the wall, it’s case shattering into a many pieces and falling to the ground. She cursed loudly, picking up the remaining parts and tossing it into the garbage, huffing loudly before she sat down on the corner of her bed and just sat there, looking out the window at the bay, David still swimming around, rolling onto his back. More otter than bear.
 

She hung her head low and brought her knees up on the edge of the bed, sniffling softly and whining a bit, her tail hanging lifeless below her. Somewhere outside, Lucas could be heard yelling at Rale and chasing him, accusing him of some misdeed. Inside her head, all she heard was silence. Painful, burning silence. All the thoughts that ran through her head when she was thinking about the project, thinking about Max...all gone now.
 

Tali whiffled softly and fell onto the bed, burying her head in the sheets, and letting them know just how enraged she was that she had spent the last two years of her life for nothing, ignoring her personal life for nothing. The sheets could only get so wet before her eyes dried up, leaving her asleep on the bed, curled up with her tail between her legs.
 
 
 

"Whoa! Lucas! Take a look at this!" Rale yipped loudly as one of the trashbags from the guest cabins ripped open, spilling forth a sharp mess of melted, shattered plastic that just barely looked like a laptop computer. Were it not for the keyboard, and the rainbowed LCD screen, it would just look like a pile of melted plastic.
 

"Rale...can’t we ever do this without you ripping open at least one...WHOA!...that’s weird! It looks all bubbly and strange. Someone must have left it out in the sun too long. Kinda like a video disc or something." Lucas examined the object a little, and then took it from Rale’s paws, looking it over closely.
 

"Think Janet could get it to work again?" Rale was a smart kid, but not when it came to electronics.
 

"Nuh-uh. This one is about as useful as a box of rocks. About as heavy, too. Erf." Lucas prodded at a slot on the side, the brittle plastic cracking away, revealing the insides of the computer, and the contents of the drive. "Hey. There’s a disk still in here. Looks allright, too."
 

Rale grabbed it back from Lucas, looking it over before his brother could protest. He shrugged and dropped it onto the ground, causing the computer to shatter into a thousand tiny pieces.
 

"Rale! What the hell...what did you do that for?" Lucas looked at his brother in absolute shock.
 

‘Coconuts. It’s like coconuts. When you want to get to the meat in the middle, you just drop it onto a real hard surface from high up. Mom doesn’t let me use the machetes that we have." Rale bent down and picked up a circular grey disk, smiling. "See?" He flipped the disc around in his paws, smiling broadly at his trophy.
 

Lucas peered down at the disc and chuckled. "Come on, brat. Let’s get this mess cleaned up, and we’ll see if Janet can use it." He started to pick up some of the larger chunks of plastic, throwing them back into another trashbag. Rale stuffed the disc into his shorts, helping to clean up the mess.
 

After they were done, they headed straight over to the lodge, searching for Janet. They eventually found her in the kitchen, and dragged her towards the den, where she had her computer set up.
 

"Allright guys...what’s all the fuss about? Some girl catch your eye and you want me to take a look at her and approve?" She struggled a bit as Lucas stuffed her into chair in front of her computer, and Rale handed her the disc that they found.
 

Janet looked down at the grey, plastic disk. It was like looking at a grey hockey puck, only a bit wider and thinner. "Ohhhhkay. So where did you guys get this one?"
 

Rale and Lucas looked back at each other. No point in lying. They wouldn’t know where to begin. Rale piped up, as usual. "Uhm...we found it when one of the trashbags burst."
 

Janet rolled her eyes. "GUYS! As if it wasn’t enough that you go around with a pair of binoculars and spy on the female guests, openly drape yourselves over them when they walk off the plane, and generally be suck-ups and letches around some of the fairer guests....is it too much to ask that you don’t go through the trash?"
 
 

Lucas shook his head. "Nono! Rale’s telling the truth! There was a really shattered laptop in one of the bags, and it ripped the plastic open. This fell out!"
 

Janet looked up at her brother, and then back down at the disc. She just about fainted when she read the label. 

McNaughton Industries Proprietary
For Internal use Only
Total Capacity: 5.00 TB
Used Volume: 4.56 TB
SAR Clearance Required for Viewing
 

"Holy shit, Lucas! Do you have any idea....this fell out of a laptop?" Janet looked up at the duo, dumbfounded. They nodded.
 

"You...no laptop has this capacity. They can get at most three terabytes, on the really nice models, but it takes a desktop or a server to load this kind of information. There is close to five terabytes of data on this little sucker. This kind of disc can only hold one terabyte at the maximum...or maybe two with compression..."
 

Lucas and Rale looked at each other, and then back at Janet. "So what’s on it?" Rale asked.
 

Janet shook her head. "Dunno." She flipped on the computer and shrugged, the desktop unit brining itself to life in a few moments. She made sure Sylvia got her money’s worth when they bought the computer, and had bought a high-volume drive when they first came out. It was first-generation, but very good nonetheless. 

Janet paused for a second before sticking the grey disc into the drive. She looked up at the screen, and yipped softly as a menu screen came up, then flickered away, the drive churning up to normal speed.
 

A black box came up on the screen. 

)Initializing.....
)Installing high-RPM holodisc drivers....
)Initializing HRPM drivers.....
 

All three of them perked their ears up as the drive seemed to shift gears, spindling up even higher than it did before. "Uhm. I don’t know if I like this. Those HRPM drivers aren’t even tested yet." Janet looked a bit wary, but Rale and Lucas quickly crowded her out, watching the screen with fascination. 

)HRPM drivers verified. Max transfer rate: .5TB/sec
)Installing primary petri program......installed
)Finding tether daemon......unable to find daemon. Proceed? (Y/N)
 

Janet blinked a bit, reaching up to press the "N" key, but fumbling it a bit as she knocked Rale out of the way. The words blinked by almost faster than she could read them. 

)Proceeding.
)Slow Network Detected.
)Installing base files.....installed.
)Installing core componentry...installed
)Installing  core memory and knowledge base................installed.
)Installing personality database...........................................installed
)De-compressing the archive...........success!
)Initializing Client daemon...........
.
.
>  ....And God created the heavens, and the earth.....and saw that it was good.
.
.
) Slow network detected. Searching for uplink.
)Uplink detected. Routing data stream to fast network link.
)Re-routed. Uploading.........
.
.
> God was an optimist.
.
.
)Upload successful.
)Spawning on network...........
)Spawn complete.
).end
 

Janet lunged forwards and  pulled the plug on the computer, her eyes as wide as dinner plates. "Criminy, what was that? It all went so fast...it shouldn’t have gone that fast..." She opened up the disc drive and took the grey puck into her paws.
 

"That was boring. No neat flashy lights or anything. I like some of the games for this better." Rale huffed a bit and Lucas just shrugged, padding out towards the door. Rale looked back and forth at Janet and Lucas.."I’m gonna go see what Hardrock’s up to. Seeeya!" He bolted out the door, almost knocking his older brother over in the process, Lucas cursing after him and giving chase.
 

Janet just stood there with the disc in her paw, looking dumbfounded. "I can’t help but feel I just got used." She looked down at the disc and padded up to her room, sticking it in the most far-off corner she could find, pushing the thought to the same place in her mind.
 
 

Tali woke up and looked outside, how the sun was directly over the cabin, meaning it was noon.  She yawned a bit and walked out the front door of her cabin, sniffing at the air. Even though she had just cried herself to sleep, she felt rather free right now. Funny, that.