-Author’s note-
Ironic hugbox is the only way I’d be able to complete a hugbox story. Believe me, I know this from experience. If this rubs you the wrong way, reader, please stop reading now.
-NotAHugBoxer
Domestic fluffies grow old and die quickly. Ten to fifteen year lifespans, maximum, under the best conditions that their tiny brains can imagine, given the best treatment as intended by the company that created them. Facilitated by all of the products that only that company had the rights to produce and disseminate.
Fluffy cadets grow old even quicker, and live shorter lives. The demanding rigors of space travel and space labor have that effect on their fragile selves. On top of this is the lack of pampering in the workforce: cadets are subjected to the realities of minimalistic engineering that is integral to spaceship design. On a spacecraft, safe rooms are a waste of precious space, and that space is better utilized for supply storage and critical mechanical subsystems more often than not. Fluffy quarters are sparse, communal and no larger than a small crawlspace. It is only the affection and appreciation of the human crew that keeps them grounded – for lack of a better term-- under such constricting living conditions.
It has been five years since Jeremiah was a candidate for space logistics. The fluffy did his time on the transports, and performed his duties. The protective skin of his space suit gleamed in the unadulterated light of distant stars, passed through clouds of icy dust trailing after comets, touched down on the stillness of asteroids and moons…
Jeremiah accomplished much in his time. Now, Jeremiah was old. The color of his fluff was faded and his inherently brittle skeleton was made even weaker from his time in the cosmos. He ached constantly, and required the aid of a mobility scooter to travel continuous stretches of distance.
The scooter was highly reminiscent of a human’s mobility scooter, although naturally much smaller. The leap from human ergonomics to fluffy did not require many iterations. The old fluffy lied on his belly upon the seat, and nudged the control stick with a hoof in the desired direction to get moving. The support frame sat on top of a single large ball bearing that was capable of omnidirectional maneuvering, as directed by the yoke, and self-righting to maintain orientation. Rolling along on the scooter felt more like gliding along on a hover-platform with how stable and quiet it was.
This was how Jeremiah reported to work every morning at the simulation center. The hallways were always filled with fluffy cadets and people alike in the beginning of the day, but Jeremiah was the only one among them zipping along on his scooter with a tired, one-tracked focus. The scaled-down spectacles bounced on his snout, and the coffee in his cup holder thermos sloshed around.
If there was ever a word to describe the old fluffy in his fluffy sized, business casual clothing, it was “Ugh”.
After navigating the shiny maze of hallways, walkways, elevators and ramps in lieu of stairs, Jeremiah rolled up to the training mission control complex.
This part of the facility was partially outdoors and comprised three separate buildings, each one housing tens of observation chambers. An expansive lawn sprawled out around the buildings, with a tree line in the distance and a few copses dotting the greenery.
Opposite the trees was the rest of this veritable city stretching along as it did. Veins of metal, glass, cement and asphalt, located next to a shimmering coastline under a cyan sky.
At the training mission control complex, there were hundreds of candidates being put through their paces all at once. The different fluffies were at various stages in their training, and they all had their own ways of learning and adapting to the scenarios presented to them. Jeremiah barely remembered his days when he was in their place-- a fluffy’s mind was still a fluffy’s mind. He did remember having a particularly difficult time with it all, however. Which is why Jeremiah was chosen to oversee the progress of a particular candidate; supposedly they were pegasi of a feather.
The clumsiness of the phrase notwithstanding.
The old fluffy did not see the alleged similarities he shared with the candidate, but he had to contend with that personality for long enough. All willing, today would be different.
Jeremiah rolled into his office and the segmented automatic door slid shut behind him. The old fluffy shifted from his scooter’s seat to his formal office chair, which had an indent in the backrest to allow Jeremiah to sit upright on his haunches. His desk had an official name plate. Jeremiah T. Fluffy. Every candidate’s middle name was “The”.
Short for “Theodore” , of course. A true maverick’s name.
Jeremiah had filing cabinets that he did not use, some pretty flowers and plants that someone else took care of for him, and a few stuffed bears and balls on the desk that he was far too old and jaded to consider charming anymore. However, there was one toy he grew to appreciate in his later years.
Jeremiah took the Rubik’s cube in his front hooves habitually and fumbled around with it. He couldn’t get the pieces to swivel just right, and he hadn’t a clue that the objective was to end up with unicolored faces at the end. He just liked how the object clattered in his so-called grasp and how interesting it looked.
From many blocks, came one.
When he was done playing with the Rubik’s cube, Jeremiah retrieved the thermos from the mobility scooter and pressed the large fluffy-accessible button on the front. A tab popped up from the thermos’ cap with a toddler straw protruding from it. Jeremiah drew a couple of sizable gulps down before turning his attention to his workstation. It too was adorned with similarly sized fluffy-accessible buttons and panels. Unlike his human contemporaries, all of the computerized equipment looked like it came from a pre-school catalog, encased in a plastic-like exterior, colored with bright primary schemes.
There was a cartoonishly oversize clock on the wall with the numbers replaced with pastel pictures. The big hand-- literally a cartoon gloved hand with its index finger pointing-- was on the picture of a fluffy blowing a whistle with gusto. Start time. Jeremiah tapped a hoof over a sequence of buttons to bring up his monitor and start his microphone feed.
“Stebe? Am Stebe wakies? Stebe…?” Jeremiah pestered the candidate over the intercom.
“Stebe am hewe! Stebe am weady fo’ testies! Testies, testies; Stebe bestest at testies!” replied the excitable stallion bouncing from his left pair of legs to his right, and alternating in an anxious dance.
“Stebe stahp tawkin’ 'boud ‘peshul wumps an’ go ged indo huggy-fwend suit!” Jeremiah chastised the fluffy named Steve, before gulping down more coffee. Internally he noted that at this rate, he would have to go relieve himself in no time!
Steve huffed. “Stebe nu am tawkin’ boud wumps, dummeh! Stebe am bestest at testies!” He stamped his hooves to punctuate each emphasized word and ascended the scaffolding that held his simulation suit in place.
Now properly suited up and granted access to the main hall from his safe room, Steve bounded down the way that all eager candidates went. Except, instead of following the helpful arrows that appeared on his view-screens, Steve decided he was going to depend on his exploring instincts.
Yet again!
And get lost!
Yet again!
All the while, Jeremiah implored him to return to the course that the flashing indicators in Steve’s field of view were directing. “Stebe! Stebe! Oh Jew-maya sky-daddeh, fowwow da fwuffin’ wights!”
“Wut’?” Steve responded obliviously while continuing to bound along without any sign of stopping.
Jeremiah took the Rubik’s cube in his hooves to steady himself. Clack, clack, clack, went his hooves on the plastic, as he mumbled, “Stebe, fo’ fwuff’s sake, dis 'ou wast chance…”
A few minutes later, Steve proudly reported, “Stebe foun’ doowsie! Am bestest ad splow!”
Jeremiah shook his head and retorted in disbelief, “How Stebe am foun’ doow?”
“Bestest at splow an’ testies!” Steve boasted with his chest puffed out.
“Nuh uh!” Jeremiah shot back, “jus’ fowwow da wights, dummeh!”
“Nu, 'ou am dummeh, dummeh!” came the absolute havoc of Steve’s scalding wittiness before he stepped into the day’s test chamber. Upon his entry, Jeremiah’s monitor switched channels to access the room’s camera. It allowed the observer-fluffy to view an actual maze from above.
Each corridor had sets of doors. There was only one correct path through these doors to get through the jumble of walls. Jeremiah could see this correct path of doors, noted by the strip of green LEDs that ran over the top of them. Every other path was designated with a different color of LED, and they were distractions and dead ends. These lights could not be seen from Steve’s vantage point on the floor of the testing area.
The only way through the maze was to follow orders.
Because, like Jeremiah before him, Steve was an excellent pilot of the microgravity maneuver equipment, but he lacked the discipline and focus to see a task completed within set parameters. Any test of technical aptitude he passed with ease, but in terms of completing objective, Steve was an abysmal candidate.
Steve always knew better than everyone else, though. Even when his methods would mean loss of finance, tangible equipment and life, fluffy or not. The man that had been Jeremiah’s observer pushed for this maze exercise to be implemented using the problem fluffy’s test data to justify the amendment to procedure. The review process was long and tedious like any other bureaucratic quagmire. By the time the change was accepted and construction on the new asset was greenlit, the man who started it all had retired from the program.
And now the fluffy who had inspired the design of this corrective tool was using it to correct what he used to be like all those years ago. All while unaware of it all.
“Fowwow Jew-maya wowdsies, Stebe,” Jeremiah instructed the other fluffy.
“Wan’ splow! How time tiww splow? Gib Stebe fwy-fingies fo’ fwy splow!”
“Nu can fwy dere, dummeh!” Jeremiah snapped. He gulped down more of his coffee.
Steve shot back hotly, “Den teww Stebe wut do, dummeh!”
Jeremiah huffed and puffed. “Otay, Stebe. Fowwow dese gud wighties, hewe!” He slapped the commands onto his oversize keypad.
“Pwetty wighties!” Steve smiled and trotted where the trail projected him to go. He wound his way through alternating lefts, rights, climbed up a short set of steps, went through several more turns, and finally he arrived at a door. There was a hollow indentation where a wall panel should have been, and an object nearby on the floor shaped conspicuously in such a way that it could only fit in that hole in the wall.
“Wut am dis fingy?” Steve wondered aloud.
“Dunno,” Jeremiah mocked ignorance, which was a level of irony so profound that it became unironic, general fluffy stupidity again. “Twy ma’e gud bwocky stackies, huh?”
“How stacky bwockies wiffout moa’ bwockies!?” Steve replied. He pressed his front hooves onto the object to secure a magnetic lock.
“Jew-maya dunno! Mehbeh 'ou do wut ‘ou twained fo’, dummeh!”
“'Ou awe da dummeh!” Steve effortlessly refuted Jeremiah once more. It was with this fluffy spite, he made the connection between shapes, and he slotted the missing piece of the wall into place. It locked in with a series of clicks. Mechanisms unseen unlatched, and the door dropped down into the floor. “Stebe foun’ way fowward!”
“Bewy impwessive,” Jeremiah drawled. He slapped in the next series of commands for the hardheaded fluffy to follow to the next doorway.
This was the pattern for the next hour and a half or so. The fuffies bickered constantly, and progress was slow, but it was still progress in the end. The grating exercise came to an end when Steve exited the last door of the maze. This last door was tucked away behind some cleverly placed twists and turns to hide the fact that it was right next to the very beginning of the testing room. After Steve left the maze, he was faced with the same door he used to enter the test.
“Stebe foun’ way backsies! Am bestest at testies and splow!” proclaimed the problem fluffy.
“Yay,” Jeremiah responded flatly, and without another word he slapped the command to shut off his microphone feed and monitor. In the privacy of his office, the old fluffy cried out, “Jew-maya hab ma’e wowstest cowfwee poopies eba, huu huu!”
He gingerly slid himself off of his seat and waddled over to the litter box next to the pretty flowers, where he fiddled with his pants to lower them enough so that he could handle his business without making a mess of himself.
That was one thing he missed about his old space suit. The Litterboxers.
I definitely enjoyed this one