Before We Were Furry
	
	Story and characters 1999 Joseph M Harrison
	
	Zack woke  with a start, and looks around him. He remembers where he is,
in another cell, in another territory. Rubbing his eyes, he sits up on the
shelf they call a bed, and looks around his cell. He walks to the bars that
make up one wall of the cell, and looks up and down the hallway. 
	"I wonder how many other tellers are here, and what the other guests are
here for. There are  sure to be more tellers, seeing as how we scare everyone.
We look at things differently, we ask questions others won't or shouldn't. We
remember things the others tell us that never happened, we remember stories of
a time before we were furry."
	He returns to his shelf, and looks about his cell. 3 walls, a floor, a
ceiling, and a wall of bars. "Well, its better than places I've been in the
past, a good place to think about how it all started. One simple question, how
much trouble could the answer be? Why can't anybody remember past about 30
years ago? Oh they remember, but its not like the other things they remember
after it. It lacks depth, feeling, almost as if it were told to them. And so
many remember the same things. Its just to strange. That led to the next
question, and the next. Traveling about the countryside, asking old men what
they remember of their childhood.
	Yep, everybody will tell you we were always furry, but it doesn't fit,
why are there still animals that can't walk and talk like us? Why do some
things that 'we' created not make seem appropriate for the way we are? Like the
prison, made of dens built of fabricated
materials, that we can't remember building? Or how to build new ones? We're the
only intelligent life on this planet, aren't we? Yes we are, but as to the
rest, well, that's one long story.
	For that, we have to go back, to about 75 years ago, back to Dr. Thadeus,
and his work for the military. Pretty straight forward stuff, Virtual Reality
Battlefield Simulation Systems. You think you're flying a plane or piloting a
tank, or even marching into battle, but you're actually safe in a bunker miles
away. No more risk of soldiers being killed, no long term after effects. The
perfect solution to the price of war, no more having to decide whether to risk
ground troops, cheaper planes. Everything politicians love.
	Ah, but Dr. Thadeus didn't want to make war, he wanted to be rid of it
altogether. As the military equipment got better, the old stuff got
declassified, and made available to civilians for entertainment, for architects
and other designers, I mean imagine building a building, or a car or anything
else for that matter. No fuss, no expense, just instant product, ready to test.
Then, Dr Thadeus showed us how to live in the buildings. Then, the good doctor
convinced us that we could be a whole world, just they way we wanted it, no
crime, no poverty, no environmental problems. Everything you could want. He
even convinced the military that they'd be needed in there to keep the peace.
	Oh, the military wasn't convinced so easily, but Dr Thadeus' reputation
convinced them to trust them, when he told them that they'd be needed to defend
the brave new world that his technology would create, so even they laid down,
and went virtual. But the good doctor hadn't told them that each mind creates
its own world, but that was unimportant, once virtual, nobody realized that
they were in a world of their own making, anybody they expected to find in
their world was there, and just the way they expected them to be.
	Then, one day we all woke up, and we were furry. Oh, we all had
memories of always being furry, but it was almost as if they were tales we had
been told or read.
	Its been a long time, and a lot of travel. A lot of going where you're
not supposed to. Talking to people, and still I have questions. I still wonder,
did we really go furry, or are we still virtual? Was the old one real, or just
another illusion? Why does everyone remember Dr. Thadeus as forty years old? A
little vanity in the program, or was he something other than human?  The
answers I have, and the questions I ask are why me and other tellers constantly
find ourselves in a cell somewhere. People are scared about what the truth
might be. People tell us that answers to these questions would upset the
balance they say. So we spend our days wandering the world,  feared the world
over, for what we know, or the trouble that follows us. Seeking answers for
questions no one wants answered.
	The only fear I have, is that I might never answer all the questions.