"I don't really understand why so many people are mice," Jack remarked, as he watched the pedestrian traffic outpace the carpool. Not all of the passersby were mice, of course -- there was the usual suffusion of canines (like Jack) and felines and mythical beasts -- but mice were a definite presence.

Daniel didn't even look up from where he lay draped over the steering wheel, eyes glazed waiting for the taillights of the car in front to budge. "Well, it's certainly cheaper than ottering," he replied, "Fresh fish isn't cheap, and unless you own your own yacht you can't exactly hunt for it. I'd guess they just aren't interested in hunting, personally." He shifted in his seat a little, flopping his uncomfortably thick tail to the other side. "And mouse tails are more convenient for sitting in traffic for hours."

"Most of the drivers are wolves, though," Jack said, making an unseen gesture towards the other drivers surrounding them, most of whom looked rather growly as the light changed from green to red without even a single car getting through the intersection ahead. He finally scowled, and started undoing his tie. "Hell with it, watching all these mice is making me hungry."

"No blood in my car," Daniel reminded him, as Jack divested himself of his suit. "And try not to get yourself killed this time."

Jack laughed, as he opened the door and stepped out into stopped traffic. "That's half the fun!"

Now, the foot traffic in the downtown area was a mishmash of various species, predator and prey, with hardly anyone giving any thought to who was who, but Jack was a naked wolf obviously on the prowl, and most of the prey species about ran for cover. "Two hundred dollars!" offered one of the exceptions, who was guarded by a large, falmboyantly dressed lizard, "And you can do *whatever you want* with me before you eat, big boy!"

But Jack was looking for a hunt, and ignored her, ducking instead down an alleyway where half a dozen mice had disappeared. The other wolves and cats and whatnot watched him with expressions ranging from interest to disgust, but it was bad manners to interefere. Daniel watched a couple of wolves follow him in, though.

"Damn it, not again," Daniel scowled, and turned off the engine. He hadn't even bothered to dress for work at all that day -- one of the perks of being an otter was that you could get away with stuff like that -- so he was able to double-click his keychain to store his car inside it, and still only be a few seconds behind in the chase.

Of course, he was almost run over as traffic finally started moving around him. "Goddammit, Jack, I should let them kill you," he muttered.

"Two hundred doll --"

"You don't look like a fish to me," Daniel snapped back.

"Hey, I can be anything you want, if the price is right." Daniel ignored her, and rushed down the alley.

Depending on how you looked at it, the world was either a much more dangerous or much safer place, since the computers took over. With the nanites saturating every person, plant, animal, rock, ocean, stream, and even the air they breathed, the machines saw everything, and could do pretty much anything they wanted at will. Luckily for humanity, will was the one thing they lacked -- their only interest was in carrying out their programmed goals.

Unforutnately, the high programmers who were still in charge were out of their fucking minds. It took a special kind of craziness to be able to speak to the computers without offending or confusing them, apparently including the ability to 'bite the bullet' when the consequences of your instructions weren't exactly what you might have expected. The computers hated being given contradictory orders, and you really didn't want to be hated by something more powerful than god.

So, murder was bad. Why was it bad? Because people died, and their potential was wasted. The computers analyzed their other instructions, and decided that the amount of freedom they'd been instructed to maintain was incompatible with preventing all murders, so they came up with an alternate solution: bring everyone back from the dead.

Then they legalized murder, as it'd been 'solved' in a different way. 'Garbage collection,' the programmers called it, in the story that everyone told, at least.

Presumably, there was an equally insane reason why everyone had been turned into half-human, half-animal hybrids, and were only allowed to change their choices once a month, during their sleep. Or why elevators had been replaced by teleporters, sometimes connecting 'floors' of a 'building' spread across hundreds of miles, but to move between buildings you needed to walk or drive.

Actually, that wasn't true -- you could take the bus. Unfortuantely, the backlog on the electronic transfer system was currently still in the 'years' range, as the process of re-assembling a human from energy and information was extremely slow, particularly at the south 18th street exit which kept running into parity errors. Due to the protocol used for the bus people had to be reassembled in first-in first-out order, and that one buggy station had crippled the whole system. Daniel had lost quite a few friends to public transit, although if you could believe the news everyone would be recovered eventually.

"Get off me!" came a desperate squeaky voice from up ahead, and Daniel ran towards the scene. Jack had a mouse by the throat, lifted up off the ground and pinned against the wall at chest height, so that his legs dangled two feet in the air. Not too surprising -- Jack *was* an excellent hunter, if a bit daft for hunting in broad daylight in a crowded street.

"Hey, you're not going to eat all of him anyway, man," one of the other wolves was saying, "We can share. Or we can kick your ass and take the whole thing. Your choice."

"Be a pal, I haven't eaten in days," the other pleaded.

Daniel slowed his run, for the sake of stealth. The mouse saw him, and gave him a pleading look -- this might all be nice and legal, and it wasn't like he'd stay dead, but getting killed was still traumatic. Not to mention inconvenient -- it usually took a few hours or days for the computers to get around to bringing you back. Daniel wasn't about to step in, though -- taking food from three wolves wasn't really something an otter was up to, and while he did have a stunner, it hadn't exactly impressed him with its stopping power the last time he'd had to use it.

Unfortunately, Jack wasn't in a reasonable mood. Maybe it was a wolf thing, or maybe he'd really been after a fight, but he snarled back at the scruffy-looking interlopers, "He's mine, catch your own."

"Get him!"

Jack had to drop the mouse to fight back, of course, but it was still two on one, and while Jack had taken a few martial arts courses after the last incident, he still wasn't much of a fighter. The mouse ran over to Daniel, somewhat to the otter's surprise, and hid behind him. "Man, that wolf was *fast*! I didn't even realize he was close before he got me."

"Er... yeah, Jack's a pretty good hunter," Daniel said, glancing down at the mouse. He didn't really want to watch the fight anyway, although *technically* he'd come to help. "Not so good at --" he winced, as one of the wovles slashed his friend across the chest. "I think I should help him."

"Nah, let the preds fight it out," the mouse said, "Stupid over-muscled idiots deserve what they get."

"Is there some reason you aren't running?" Daniel asked the rodent, "I mean, one side or the other is going to win, and I'm not going to protect you from either of them."

The mouse grinned, "Eh, I can run whenever I want. Your friend's gonna get his ass kicked, and Spike and Lance there couldn't catch a slug."

Daniel looked up at the fight. Jack was on his back, now, with one of the wolves kicking him in the side -- not enough to kill him, just enough to hurt. Damn it, he had to do something. He reached into his pocket for his keychain... which wasn't there.

The mouse gave him a look of exaggerated innocence as he started to back away, then turned to bolt -- but as an otter, Daniel was fairly quick to act, and landed on his tail before he got ten feet. From there it was simple to reel him back in, as even an otter outmassed a mouse by at least two or three times.

"Damn it!" the mouse snapped, before Daniel grabbed his muzzle and pulled it up, putting the claws on his other hand up to his throat. "Mmmph!" He dropped the keys to the ground, with a clatter. Daniel stepped on them to make sure they weren't going anywhere, and let the kid go. Theft had been solved in a fashion similar to murder -- he would have gotten everything back as soon as the computers got around to noticing it'd changed owners without permission -- but that could take days or weeks, since it was a 'low priority' idle task.

"Ha! I'll get you next time," the would-be thief called out, running off, and Daniel rolled his eyes and reached down to get his keychain...

Only to be sent sprawling as a heavy, stinky mass of greasy fur went barreling into him, knocking him flat. Apparently, one of the wolves had noticed his presence and come to deal with him. Apparently, judging from the way he seemed to be going for the kill, this wolf wasn't averse to eating otter, which probably meant he'd never tried it.

Daniel dug his teeth into the wolf's arm as it wandered too close to his muzzle, while squirming out of the wolf's grip, and felt the bones crunch. He was scratched up and bleeding, but not seriously injured, which was more than could be said for his assailant. He crouched down to present his teeth to the wolf, hopping back and forth (but mostly back away) to keep him from aiming too carefully. And to try to buy time to get his fucking stun gun out of his fucking key chain.

The wolf made a clumsy leap at him, but he was able to dodge to the side, and then he had his little stunner, and zapped the wolf in the side. The wolf glowed, and disappeared.

"The hell?" Daniel remarked. Admittedly, it'd been years since he'd fired his stunner, but it wasn't supposed to disintegrate people. Wait -- there was a new message for him, flashing in the corner of his mind.

*system bulletin: due to the unacceptable failure rate of stun technology on certain biological models, all stun devices have been altered to use disintegration as a means of temporarily incapacitaing the target. Please be advised*

"Hey, where's Lance?" came a voice from down the alley.

Daniel pointed the 'stunner' at Spike. "I stunned him. He went bye bye."

"Fuck. You might as well zap me too, then. Your friend tore me up, and I don't want to spend the next week--" Daniel shot him, and he disappeared as well. The stunner gave its little 'out of energy' bloop noise, and Daniel cursed -- two shots, now? When he'd bought it it'd had fifty before needing a recharge, but apparently disintegration was more energy intensive. Thank you, computer.

Putting his useless gun away, the otter ran over to where his friend lay on the ground, in a pool of blood. "Hey Jack, you okay?" As he got close he could see that it was obviously too late, though -- he was dead, again. Spike had gotten a good bite on his throat and tore it right out, from the looks of it. "Damn it, Jack."

Daniel looked both ways, then reached down and peeled off a strip of Jack's flesh from where his arm had been split open, and nibbled on it curiously. Hmm, not bad. He considered taking some back to cook properly, but his roommate was a herbivore, and had enough problems with him eating grocery-store fish... besides, there was a a rat pack coming around the corner, attracted by the smell of death. Leave scavenging to the scavengers.

And of course, traffic was stopped again, by the time he got back to the street, and he was still bleeding messily from the scratches the wolf had given him. Daniel sighed, and started the long walk home.