The Archive
By Oculus
Featuring art by Quickhorn, Carpdime and AMDk7
~
You have been working as an intern for the Dark Horse Company for the past month, fulfilling the role of a lab assistant. About a year ago, the (in)famous bio-engineering company Hasbio disappeared under circumstances that could only be described as an “act of God.” Where the headquarters once stood, only a crater was left. In addition, the patents for various fluffy pony breeds, subbreeds and related biotoys within patent offices of the US were scrubbed out of existence. The branch offices of Hasbio in other countries were similarly affected, as they were left stranded, with little to no direction as to what to do next.
The man you work for is Derek Craven. Mr Craven held a large investment in Hasbio before its sudden departure, and had an interest in buying out the company. However, the sudden destruction of Hasbio and the vacuum it left within the industry has left room for a possible replacement, something that Craven has been interested in.
You’ve been helping Craven at the archive of Hasbio footage and documentation that’s located within his five-storey building. It is an endeavour that you work on with a crew of three other people. There is Agent-33-79-90, though he prefers to go by the alias of “Stone-Rouge”. For some rather bizarre reason, he never removes his fox mask and cyberpunk suit. His suit casts an imposing figure, being over 6 feet tall, and weighing around 890 pounds. There is Mr Sova, a scientist from Hasbio’s Russian division who joined Dark Horse ever since the dissolution of that company. He wears the usual scientist getup of a labcoat, but you always notice little owl motifs, like his tie would have owls on it. That, and he favours more techno-colours like mauve and magenta. And then there’s Elias, whose pretty much no different from you.
You’ve been really impressed with the level of information that is available in Craven’s archive. While it doesn’t contain minute details, the extensive listing of ever breed, blueprint and experimentation that had been conducted within Hasbio must have taken some time to pull off. It’s so impressive, that you’re wondering how it is that Craven got this archive. And it was that particular question you voiced out to him one day in September.
“I suppose it is time.
Tomorrow, I’d like you to report to Ogre Street for work.”
~
The following morning, you arrive at the location Craven specified. The location in question is a comic book shop, filled with a lot of Hasbio-related merchandising such as comics based of the Squeakyfriend and Foxhoarder breeds.
As you wait, you noticed a tall blonde man with a Captain’s Hat walking towards you. Besides him is a fairly ordinary looking chap. So ordinary that, for a brief moment, you didn’t notice he was there. On any other occasion, you would have thought him (or was it a her?) to be a passer-by, and it was only by association that you realize that this particular individual was with the Captain.
The captain introduces himself first, as he asks “I take it you’re one of Craven’s interns?”
You acknowledge your name as you reply, “Yes I am.”
“I am Johan Andersson, though some call me Marlin. I am the head of the European branch of ABAP.”
“ABAP! I really like what you guys do for fluffies. I’ve been reading about your attempts to preserve endangered breeds like the KMEB and Gowdie.”
“And I’d like you to meet a friend of ours,” says the Captain, as he introduces his friend to you. Upon shaking his hand, you feel like the colour of the man’s eyes change. At first, they seemed green, but then they became a shade of brown. But they changed back to green again. Rather peculiar, but you also didn’t get much sleep last night.
“I see you’ve met Captain Marlin here.”
The gentle tap on the shoulder from Craven caught you by surprise. The hooded man has a terrible habit of doing that.
“Morning Mr Craven,” you say, greeting your employer. “I’m a little bit confused as to why you asked us to go to a comic book shop.”
“Well, this comic book shop is owned by an associate of ours, a very important individual.”
“Okay,” you trail off, as you frankly admit, “I fail to see how this place is related to the archive we maintain.”
From under his hood, Craven lightly laughs, as he says, “You’ll see.”
~
“Craven! Didn’t expect to see you here!”
“Morning Lester. Business as usual?”
“Eh, nothing ever changes. “
The owner of this comic shop is Lester, a bespectacled man whose beard still had the smell of fried chicken on it. His T-Shirt, while still nice smelling, had some grease marks on it, indicating that this man most likely had chicken & waffles for breakfast. Regardless, Lester’s frankness with Mr Craven impresses you. Almost always wearing his hood and never revealing himself to most people, Craven has had a chilling effect on most of your colleagues as well as yourself. So, for Lester to be rather chatty with him seemed rather unusual.
“Hewwo fowks!”
A fluffy peeks out of the front pocket of Lester’s shirt as he greets your party. The ABAP intern notes, “Oh, that’s a cute Buwwito microfluff.”
“Actually,” says Lester in a rather pointed manner, “it’s a Quickhorn microfluff.”
As Mr Craven brushes by you, you can feel the chill from his presence bringing your hair on a stand. His hand touches the ABAP intern’s shoulder, as he addresses him.
“Sam hasn’t introduced you to them yet, but I like to introduce you to two of my colleagues.”
As your group walks into the modelling area of the show, you see Stonerouge and Sova at a table, having just finished painting some figurines. Besides them is a 3D printer, designed to print figurines on the fly. Sova is holding what looks like a figurine based off Craven with his hooded face. However, instead of a cloaked body, the figurine is wearing a metal thong and other leather accessories.
In a low voice, while holding another figurine, Sova says “Hey buddy I think you got the wrong door, the leather club is two blocks down.”
Upon seeing this malarkey, Craven sighs. Sova and Stone, aware of Craven’s presence, let out a soft “Oh shit!” and quickly put aside their figurines.
“You have to forgive them, they’re a bunch of jokers.”
As Lester notices that the party had assembled into his shop, he proceeds to the entrance. Looking to his left and right, he checks to see if anyone is heading for his shop. Sensing that there may be no customers as it’s the early morning, he flips the sign on his shop to indicate that the owner has gone out of shop for a while.
~
Lester has been guiding the group down to the basement of his shop. You’re a little surprised that you had to climb five flights of stairs to reach this particular level. You speculate that Craven’s company had kept a secret archive in the least likely place, that being in a bunker underneath a comic book shop. But you’re wondering why they’d go through this much effort.
Upon reaching the level, your group is confronted by what seems to be a metal door. To the side of it is a keypad, along with an intercom, and a third metal panel.
“Zea, we have visitors.”
“I had been alerted to their presence,” a robotic voice answers, “Your party consist of seven individuals, all accounted for.”
Lester, Craven and the Marlin all take out a keypass. Each man swipes their pass on the reader, then presses a code on the keypad. You surmise that all three men were needed to access this archive. After Lester finished typing in his code, the third panel opens up to reveal a little wheel.
Lester reaches for the pocket in his short, and takes out the microfluff you saw earlier.
“Alright little buddy, you do what you have to, okay?”
“Otay daddeh!”
Lester places his microfluffy within this wheel, and the fluffy starts to run, very vigorously. Upon closing the door, the metal door parts opens, and it is then that you realize that the door you’re looking at is actually an elevator.
As the party goes in, you ask, ‘Are we going down?”
“No, says Craven. “We’re going up.”
~
Across the plane of glass, you bear witness to an unforeseeable infinity of pure darkness. Unlike the night sky, there are no stars present, no moon, nor celestial body. Only endless darkness. Wondering where the light come from, you look above. Apparently, the sole source of illumination is a giant rotating beacon.
You are aware of what you are seeing. Although most fluffy breeds are practical and pose no threat, fluffies of the impractical breed have been known to interact with existence of interdimensional voids that outside of the current universe. Observation of these voids have been limited due to the hazardous nature of managing impractical breeds such as the Fillialcacophony and InkiePie.
“Incredible”, you say, as you wonder, “How did we even get here?”
“We don’t know when this construct was built. But about a decade ago, ABAP had discovered the existence of this facility, and with it, that satellite over there.”
As Captain Marlin says this, he points finger towards an object floating around the lighthouse. You had seen pictures of the hubble telescope, and this looks similar, but its panels are aimed towards the lighthouse, receiving the light to power it.
“I see that you brought our guests here.”
You recognize the robotic voice that had greeted your party at the elevator floor.
“My database holds as much information as I can regarding the creation of fluffies by Hasbio at some point in the past, and has chronicled the influence of their genetic engineering on this reality. However, my duties are bound to this particular reality.”
“You speak of particular reality. I take it that you hail from an alternate reality?
“I am afraid that your party does not have a high enough clearance for me to divulge my actual origin.”
“He says that all the time,” sighs Craven, “’til now, we don’t know when this lighthouse was built, or who created Zea over there.”
“But why go through all this trouble to leave a satellite in a place like this? Why not just host the information in some place like, I dunno, Antarctica or something?”
“That long a time? But I didn’t feel it”
“A picosecond is a trillionth of a second. The breach actually lasted 5 seconds.”
“Oh. That doesn’t seem very long.”
“It may not seem like a long time to you, but it was long enough to indicate an impending existential threat. There were a few other prior incursions, but that was most notable.”
“That sounds like some really impressive reality manipulation. Who was behind it?”
“Certain bad faith actors from outside of this reality have attempted to affected the past and history of this reality. Thus, my creators had constructed me as a means of preserving the memory of the origins of Hasbio, and with it, its products. As I am suspended in the interdimensional void between universes, my database would not be affected by such manipulation.”
Looking through the infinite blackness of this void, Craven announces his next decision.
“We should continue with the tour.”
~
Taking the elevator, your part has gone a few floors down from the top of the lighthouse. There’s still a lot more floors before the elevator can pass by the portal that would bring the elevator back to the reality this construct was “anchored” to. The room that your part has entered is entirely white, though you can a screen in the center of the room. Next to the screen is a variety of VR headsets.
“What is this room?”
“It is a reality simulation room. Although we cannot fully capture every moment in the past, Zea’s technology has allowed us to preserve specific moments.”
“So this is a VR room? Why have such a room in a place like this, when we’re literally a few metres away from oblivion?”
“There are certain simulations that are not possible within an ‘actual’ reality. For clarity, the best way to experience these simulations is when they’re conducted in a place outside of the unique gravity of a known reality.”
You overhear a discussion between the ABAP members of your party.
“This feels very familiar. Is this the same room as the one Hasbio Sam has?”
The Captain nodded grimly as he confirms, “Yes, it is.”
The Captain goes up to the console, and proceeds to punch in some keys. On the screen, you can see the date, that being the 5th of July, 2014.
“Processing.”
On the screen, you can see a loading screen of sorts. Various word salads could be seen, with the most noticeable one being the reticulation of splines.
“Timestamp confirmed. Materializing now. Please put on the headsets.”
You look around. Marlin, Stone and Owl put on their headsets with relative ease, indicating that they may have come by this room quite regularly. Derek needs a little help putting on the headset, but you wonder if its because he is putting on the headset while remaining fully clothed. The ABAP interns seems to be looking at the VR headset rather intently. The Captain offers to help in, but the intern refuses the aid, and quickly dons the headset.
You’ve won VR headsets before. VR technology has reached a level where interfaces achieve an almost perfectly simulated reality. However, due to the nature of brain and the eye, complete and total virtual reality can never be truly achieved. But this was something different. You don’t feel like you’re wearing a headset. You look down, and see that you are wearing the labcoat of a staff member of Hasbio. As you turn around, you see that your party is also similarly clothed. Wondering how real the simulation is, you proceed to touch a person. The person does not react to your touch, but, he feels real. You could feel the cotton of his coat.
“I advise against trying to affect the simulation,” warns Zea, “as doing so will disrupt and prematurely terminate it. This simulation exists purely for observation.”
“Which this level of technology, you could literally visit the past! Why do you just keep it to fluffies?!!”
“Because I was constructed specifically to archive information about Hasbio, and with it, its creations. There may be similar satellites in orbit around this reality, but my purpose has centred around what I can of Hasbio.”
“Johann, why did we come here specifically?”
“Someone at the Dark Horse company was talking about a fluffy project that Hasbio once worked on. I had forgotten about it, but I decided to look into the specific project he mentioned.
This project was based off the nine-tailed fox, a recurrent spirit through East-Asian mythology, where it is Chinese, Japanese or Korean. The mythical cryptid has influenced many a story, and the creator of the Carpdime breed himself was inspired by the Keaton from Ocarina of Time.”
Though having an excess number of trails, the fluffy has a beautiful golden coat, and you can see the head engineer of the Carpdime breed slowly stroking its mane. Struck by its beauty, you comment, “Aww, that’s such a cute fluffy.”
However, the nearby engineers looking at the project seem to have a different idea.
“3 tails to pluck, aw yeah.”
“For some reason I just imagine some guy following that fluffy and they get more and more lost as they continue walking into the forest,” said a rather wise and learned genetic engineer with a thick beard.
“This is why you stomp their pelvis until you hear a satisfying “Crunch”, then pull out your GPS and use it.”
“Two too many tails. Would kill.”
Realizing the futility of arguing with constructs that existed in a past era, you openly protest.
“How could they say such things? That was someone’s work and effort. I can imagine they took so much time to make this beautiful creature, only for someone to wish bloody murder on it.”
“I only exist to preserve a memory of what was. I am not here to pass an opinion or judgement of what existed.”
The Captain nods, as he laments, “I’m afraid that’s the reality of what it was like to work at Hasbio. From what I understand, they’d accept anyone within the company, and they really mistreated their creations.”
The excursion at Ogre Street was brief. Within an hour, Craven had decided to give Owl, Stone and you the day off. However, and while you value your free time, the discovery you made today bothers you a little. You had heard about the various scandals related to Hasbio, but it felt like a bizarre experience having to see such vitriol up close before your every eyes. You could only imagine the kind of work culture Hasbio had, in addition to the mistreatment they inflicted on a genetically engineered creature that they did not see fit for treating well until they were coerced by pressures groups like ABAP, AWFP, as well as the government.
~
The following day you return to the Dark Horse company, still thinking about the experience of the previous day. However, and upon passing by the labs, something catches your eye. You see a genetic engineer combing the mane of a white fluffy but with four large tails. Remembering what you saw the previous day, you step into the lab as you say, “That’s a kitsune fluffy!”
“Beautiful, isn’t she?" says the genetic engineer. You notice that he is wearing a shirt bearing the AMD logo. He continues, "I was doing some research into some older breeds, based on some information that Stone shared from the archive. The Kitsune fluffy caught my eye, and I decided to try my hand at it.
I’m calling her Phenom.”
As he delicately strokes the mane of his creation, you smile, knowing that something from the past had a positive influence on the present.
Summary
~
Epilogue
At the mess hall, you shared this little anecdote with Stone and Owl. Both men are eating their lunch while the television plays the local news at a low volume. Elias couldn’t join as he was busy handling some other lab work.
Stone notes, “I think there is a point to looking into the past of fluffies, even if it was a dark place. Fluffies mean a lot of things to people, and it would be a shame if we lose all those information and ideas related to them.”
“I’m just happy to see that someone decided to have a go at trying out a kitsune fluffy, even if it seemed a little impractical.”
As you say this, the image of a certain and very wealthy businessman turns up on the television screen. Recognizing who it is, you grab the nearby remote, as you raise the volume.
“Police are currently investigating the sudden disappearance of the famed real-estate mogul and ABAP founder Samuel Adams ……”
