This is NOT a story. It’s a companion piece for an upcoming story.
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The Fluffy Dream Palace is a work of great innovation from the wizards at Hasbio to make fluffy euthanasia quick, simple, clean, and most importantly of all: FUN!
Consisting of long cabinets with interchangeable wooden facades, the inner-workings are rather simple electronics. Though designs vary based on location or on-going Hasbio promotions, all have familiar elements. There’s a wide viewing window at the front should one want to watch their beloved biopet go to Skettiland, with the option to completely obscure the panel if one doesn’t have the stomach to watch. The back of each cabinet is fitted with a touchscreen monitor which plays various movies dependent on the viewers choice. Flooring consists of easily cleanable plush green Astroturf and various toys are often littered about, selection dependent on those maintaining the device.
The wooden facades as mentioned are interchangeable though many have the rainbow design motif indicative of Hasbio. Common design elements are glittering rainbows, poofy clouds, smiling suns, plates of sketti. Over the years there were many promotional cabinet designs for holidays or FluffTV crossovers which have become hot collectors items.
At the front of each Dream Palace is an electronic selection tablet that functions much in the way a digital jukebox does. Potential customers are able to scroll through a small collection of different 3 minute interactive movies, seeing a snippet of each to better give their fluffy a dream send-off. There are heroic offerings featuring Captain Flufftastic where fluffies are able to bat their hooves around to fend off aliens, Cinnamummah singing the ever popular mummah song while asking for huggies, or unbranded experiences such as dreamy scenes of shooting stars or fluffy white clouds.
Potential customers pay in quarters (suggested pricing: $2) to a small coin slot to unlock a sliding door panel on the side to allow their fluffy into the cabinet. Once inside and a selection for a movie is made, the cabinet seals itself off completely from the outside world. A small motor kicks on and feeds a steady amount of carbon monoxide into the cabinet, ensuring a painless and dignified death for your fuzzy li’l friend.
Each cabinet is able to cozily accommodate up to ten regularly sized fluffies. Those with weight issues such as overly-indulged pillows and Forever Foals are unable to fit past the side panel to enter.
Once three minutes have passed, the cabinet lets off safe amounts of carbon monoxide into the environment and unseals for future use. The top of the cabinet has a flashing light to indicate when it’s currently occupied by a deceased fluffy, which Fluffmart employees are encouraged to attend to immediately.
These devices were a mainstay in every Fluffmart once upon a time and viewed as truly humane way to dispose of unwanted fluffies. They felt no pain from the experience, no duress, and in fact were often having the best of times until falling asleep forever. Despite the good intentions behind the cabinet, critics pointed to the crass nature of how death was treated and how clueless owners would believe the Dream Palace to be a game rather than a tool for euthanasia. In spite of many posters and warnings, people continued to accidentally send their pets off to an early death.
Today you won’t see a Dream Palace in any Fluffmart. Some made their way to the secondary market, many were donated to shelters across the nation as a tax write-off. Worryingly, abusers have found it quite simple to modify and use as tools of torture.
Looking forward to this