An Evolved Sense of Justice

by dobanochi

A raccoon PI seeking asylum finds himself in Z-Town, he encounters a trailblazing hare police officer who's grown frustrated with her work and a fox who quit the force after an existential crisis - but didn't have a backup plan. As a strange new threat comes upon the city, the three must solve the question: how do you help save the world when you can hardly help yourself?

3. Where No One Knows My Name

Chapter Three, "Where No One Knows My Name"

He didn't want to be doing this, but he didn't have a choice.

Or, excuse me, let me rephrase that: he had a choice inasmuch as his other option was to do nothing but run and hide for the rest of his life. Not much of a choice, now was it?

Granted, he was kind of running and hiding here anyway, but at least this way he was trying to maintain a somewhat normal existence. At least this way he could keep himself busy and try to earn money rather than huddle in a homeless camp - and the only homeless camp he knew of back home probably wouldn't have him back after he attracted the mob to their location.

But while he had the option to work, he didn't have much of a choice in what type of work he'd be doing. Private investigator work isn't inherently the kind of job that would disqualify you from switching to another career, but after what he'd done all for a case that he hadn't even been qualified for? Oh, not a chance. It was a miracle he didn't wind up in prison after his name got out, but any employer giving him a job was out of the question. The fine details about what he'd had to do wasn't necessarily plastered all over the internet, but if anybody wanted to do some detective duty of their own, they could find it before too long. Hi, I'd like to work at Burger King! If you should happen to look me up online, please don't mind the fact that I've committed thievery, trespassing, breaking and entering, false imprisonment, basic assault, witnessed people being KILLED AND DEVOURED and withheld this information from the authorities, and depending on how much agency and personhood you want to assign to me and that thing that was on my back, I may arguably have murdered a guy myself. So when do I start!?

But despite this employment handicap, he was trying to parlay this into an advantage in the career he was stuck in. If you did Google his name, you'd get articles about how he'd been found unconscious with an enormous wound in his back on the industrial south bank of the Fraser River - across from the city, out of their jurisdiction. Therefore when he came to in the emergency room and was visited by suburban cops from the city of Richmond, cops who hated the Vancouver force almost as much as the VPD hated him, he gambled on sharing some information with them, telling them about the ring to lure in and kill lowlives for their flesh at the jazz club downtown and the city's scientific community conducting ludicrously unethical experiments, and he didn't tell them any more than that, claiming to be too delirious to remember the fine details (and considering his state of health, that wasn't much of an exaggeration). It was enough to get the suburban officers to raise the issue with the cops across the river, who were now under pressure to do the investigating themselves, and sure enough they made all the same discoveries he had - but legally. This set off a chain of events that put Clarissa Bloodworth and a bunch of scientists behind bars, and for all those interested in finding out how this discovery came about, they could consult their favorite search engine and read about how they'd been tipped off by a raccoon PI who had been too mentally and physically traumatized to explain where he became privy to this information, testify in court, or in any other way aid the investigation. Hopefully now that he was advertising his services to teach others to be detectives, his prospective pupils would be impressed by how he'd managed to make such an enormous discovery while staying safe and would be satisfied enough by that to avoid the web forums where other working private investigators discussed and speculated the wildly illegal shit he surely must have done to discover such things in the first place (much of their conjecture being completely spot-on).

This of course begs the question, however: why was he advertising his services under his real name if dangerous individuals were looking for him? My friend, do you think he wanted to? He'd tried marketing himself through word-of-mouth in Seattle and Portland, but you can only get so far with blindly asking near-strangers whether they know somebody who needs photographic evidence of infidelity for divorce court.

In retrospect, he should have played the long game, but as he lay in that hospital bed screaming in agony every time a nerve pulsated through his eviscerated back, he simply hadn't been thinking straight, and all the kept crossing his mind was how much more screwed he'd be if they figured out how he'd procured the information he'd dared to share. Some would say that he shouldn't have told them in the first place, but he felt a moral obligation to see to it that someone quash this threat since he and Renee could no longer do it by themselves - and since he was fairly certain he was going to die in that hospital bed anyway. In that moment, he thought the Richmond cops would keep him safe from the wrath of everybody in Vancouver. And he was mostly right; as incapacitated as he was, he played it up even more so they'd think he was unreliable well past the point of regaining his composure, and while they did do a thorough background check on him and gave him a good long grilling to see if he had any other pertanent information that he wasn't telling them, that was it. They'd eventually decide that they'd cleaned up the mess as much as possible and that anything else he could give them would just make a mess anew and they finally stopped bothering him - but since he hadn't testified or anything, they weren't going to offer him witness protection. He wanted to be left alone? Fine, they left him alone. He was discharged from the hospital and left to fend for himself, and his first instinct was to get the hell out of Dodge.

At least Renee was okay while being in a similar boat. The authorities never even figured out that she knew anything, so while she was never involved in the formal investigation, she had even less protection from the law; she never got to hide in the security of a hospital. He hadn't been encouraging her to join him in fleeing the country just because he wanted his partner in crime with him; he'd been deeply concerned for her safety in Canada as well. But if she'd made it this long without any friction, maybe she was in the clear and so was he and perhaps he was worried over nothing, though he wasn't quite sure. After all, which of them would they want more, him or her? He'd done all the footwork but she'd been the brains - hey, maybe they wanted to get her first before getting him but they couldn't find her because that vixen was just too crafty for them…

...Is this making sense? Is any of this making sense? If not, it's probably not your fault, my friend. The doctors told him that for all the trauma that thing had done to his physical body, the whole ordeal had only caused very minor brain damage that should have healed itself in due time as long as he didn't reinjure it, but he often had to wonder whether that prognosis was some sort of placebo just to make sure he didn't freak out further.

...He should be dead. He should absolutely have been dead. It was dumb luck that he'd gotten out of The Bite without literally becoming chopped liver, it was dumb luck that that warehouse worker found him dying on the ground in Richmond, and there were a dozen times in between those two events where he also should have croaked but miraculously didn't. And now here he was diving right back into the life that almost took his life. You don't do that. You don't get granted a new lease on life and then make the exact same mistakes that almost led you to your demise the first time around. He wasn't planning on doing anything too risky this time around, but he hadn't been the first time either, now had he? He'd just been on a routine assignment to bust another cheating husband when he'd simply stumbled into something much, much more sinister. Now he was out of options but to return to that line of work and hope he didn't accidentally stumble into something similar again - and hope he didn't lead his students down that same dangerous path.

Oh, and lest we forget, another reason he should be dead: one could make a strong argument that it was a moral imperative to kill himself while that dangerous parasite was growing inside him, to erase it from existence before it could hurt others even if that meant taking himself out with it, but he hadn't done it and now that thing whatever it was may have presently been roaming around Vancouver; as far as he knew, they never did find it. Who, you ask, would make such a sick and macabre argument that he was a bad person for not committing suicide when he had the chance? Well, himself, for one.

And before you ask, no, he didn't have any idea for how he could swing his photography degree into a new career; if he had known how to make a living out of his youthful passion for snapping pictures, he'd have done that years ago and not fallen back onto photographing unfaithful men just to make ends meet in the first place.

Well, sitting in his car feeling sorry for himself wasn't going to pay the bills; he wasn't skilled enough as a writer to make depression a viable career option. But he figured he ought to venture out and get to know this city if this would finally be the one where he got his footing. What was this city's motto again? "Where Anybody Can Be Anything"? Laughably generic and just begging for cynical ridicule, but he could appreciate the earnest attempt at optimism; he had certainly been on the path to becoming less pessimistic before the world gave him a boatload of very good reasons to be a pessimist all over again.

He was presently sitting in the passenger seat of his beat-up sedan, car keys deliberately thrown onto the floor of the cabin just so that any cop who might come across him couldn't make the case that he was drinking while operating a vehicle (they could absolutely still slap him with an Open Bottle, but he needed his booze and had nowhere else to consume it). His drink of choice was… well, he hadn't been paying too close attention when he grabbed the case, he'd just faintly recognized the logo and packaging and expected he'd snagged Old Milwaukee, which he'd decided was his favorite cheap American beer while living in Seattle and Portland, but upon closer inspection, the label on the bottle read "Old Pawaukee". Was that… was that for a promotion or something? Was it a temporary rebrand for a special occasion he wasn't aware of? It was weird enough that it had been on the shelf next to what appeared to have been Natural Light but was instead dubbed "Catty Light"; same with the Beck's branded as "Buck's", and what he'd thought was surely Icehouse but was instead billed as "Micehouse", in cans big enough for a real mouse to drown in no less. All he knew was that he was pissed that Molson was hard to find in the States. And speaking of being pissed, the piss-weak beer really made him need to take a piss. If the inkling in his head told him that he ought to get out of this car and explore, the urge to relieve himself was the impetus for him actually doing it.

"Aaagh… ow, ow, ow, ow, owww…" There were some of those neurological issues. A wound that severe never had much of a chance of healing fully, and now with a bunch of exposed nerve endings just sticking out from between his shoulderblades where no fur would ever grow again ensured that even the gentlest of contact with any surface would sting like a bitch - as it would when he separated his back from any such surface. Sometimes even a loose hair follicle off his own body would fall in there and get his arms spasming in pain and discomfort. But hey, at least it was another medical miracle that he'd regained most of the control and movement in his arms and legs when there had been plenty of opportunity for the nerve damage to be much, much worse.

On a related note, he stood outside his car for a moment seriously debating whether to leave his trenchcoat behind for the day, seeing as it was actually pretty warm and sunny on this late-spring day. But whereas he wore his coat in Vancouver to match both the city's drizzly climate and the old-school detective look he got such a kick out of, he continued wearing it the further south he traveled to make the strange shape of the flesh on his upper back a little less obvious - and to provide some concealment just in case he started spontaneously bleeding through his shirt and undershirt again.

He'd been parked in an open-air lot for upwards of an hour now without paying the meter, so if anybody had come by to ticket him yet, he hadn't noticed. Now that he was actually going to leave his vehicle, however, he figured he might as well pay the fee so as not to get busted.

As he walked over to the ticket booth, he couldn't help but notice how accommodating the lot seemed to be. There were five distinct sections of parking based on size: megafauna, medium-large species, medium-medium, medium-small where he was parked, and then a tiny multilevel garage off in one corner for the smallest of rodents. Up in Vancouver, they fancied themselves as progressive for having giant, regular, and tiny parking spots in the same lot, while most American cities he'd seen so far were content to just have the standard parking spaces and call it a day, mice and elephants implied to be sticking to their own corners of town with their own infrastructure anyway. But here they went the extra mile to let Kinds of all shapes and sizes inhabit the same parts of town and park in the same lot. The payment booth by the exit even had five separate interface boxes to correspond to the different sizes.

...And it didn't accept cash. Okay, fair game, it had been noted for decades that paper currency was an outdated concept in a size-diverse society, attempts to make physical legal tender that rodents could actually carry and that pachyderms could actually grasp proving to be more of a hassle than anybody was willing to put up with, but while the push to go exclusively plastic was more good than not, situations like his proved that the world wasn't ready to ditch paper just yet. One would think that a city that prided itself on being so forward-thinking as Zootopia did would be more sensitive to the fact that some very desperate undocumented asylum-seekers (like him) wouldn't necessarily have the luxury of opening up a bank account or establishing a credit line.

He did technically have a debit card on him, but as far as he could tell, Scotiabank didn't operate down here so he couldn't directly deposit cash to his account, and it wasn't like he had an employer to provide an inflow of electronic payments, so if he spent the scant amount of money on his card, he had no idea how he'd be replenishing it, even if he did have a decent quantity of cash on his person. In Seattle and Portland he was able to avoid the issue, but now he was getting to the point that he had to do something about it, especially if this city was so anti-cash. Could a currency exchange help him out? Did he have to do it the old-fashioned way and find someone he trusted to put his cash in their own bank account and wire it to his? Aw, he'd figure something out eventually, but that didn't solve the issue now of how if he paid… twenty-five bucks minimum for three hours of parking!? Yeah, that might just put his account into "low balance penalty" territory.

He stepped outside the booth for a moment to look up and down the streetscape and ponder what to do. And what a streetscape it was. This wasn't the most bustling part of town, but there were still plenty of people making their way up and down the avenue, and the scene was just as diverse as the parking lot. Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland all touted themselves as accommodating places, but between the attitudes of the citizens and the physical architecture, they were nowhere near this progressive. Giraffes and moose and rhinos were courteous to not run into rabbits and porcupines and koalas scurrying by at their feet. Across the street were three levels of storefronts with doors suited for people about his size, all stacked next to one huge clothing store that didn't exaggerate when it advertised itself as "BIG & TALL". And while there didn't seem to be too much going on for the very small, there was a rodent walkway elevated about two feet off the ground, with elevators at either end of the block and drawbridges where bigger species would have to cross, and a conveyor belt walkway like you see in airports going in each direction for those in a rush needing to compensate for their little legs; this walkway looked so spotless that it might have been installed yesterday.

That was another thing, this entire city just seemed almost eerily clean. He was glad he hadn't tossed his beer bottle out the window like he'd been tempted to do, seeing as now he was wondering if this place had stricter littering laws than Singapore. This city wanted badly to be seen as a utopia, and they were undeniably doing a great job on the aesthetic front. Even as he'd driven in on the 505 spur, he hadn't even seen any graffiti on the viaducts; either this city was good about preventing vandalism, they were good at cleaning it up… or the citizens of this town genuinely weren't even cynical enough to tag some overpasses on the freeway, because it was just that happy of a town. A city full of optimists, eh? He'd never fit in here.

Of course, looks can be deceiving, and it was entirely possible that he'd thus far only seen the good, bright, yuppified neighborhoods. Speaking of which, where was he exactly? He pulled out a map from his jacket pocket - not even a real map, just one he'd printed off the internet when he borrowed a computer at his last hotel. From what he could glean from this, he was somewhere due west of downtown in the "Savanna Central" neighborhood near the boundary with the "Rainforest District". He understood that as part of the city's commitment to diversity, they decorated the different parts of town after all the different biomes you could find on Earth. Man, there was an entire quarter of the city called "Tundra Town", what was that place like? Just fake snow and Christmas decorations all year round? He could just imagine. I-505 had passed through areas called the Meadowlands (isn't that where some football team played?) and the aforementioned Rainforest District before terminating just west of downtown, not far from where he was now; from what he could see, the Meadowlands and Savanna Central looked like fairly standard neighborhoods while the Rainforest District had a lot of trees planted all over as you passed over hills and around a big mountain in the center of town. Fittingly enough, it had been raining as he drove through the Rainforest District; if he didn't know better, he'd think that was somehow controlled and orchestrated.

A shadow crossed over his map and he realized an elephant was passing by on the sidewalk. Oh yeah, he had a parking tab to pay, didn't he? Well, time to test whether these people were as friendly as they seemed.

"Excuse me," he piped up.

The elephant seemed surprised to hear a voice. "Hm?" She looked around before she looked down and saw the raccoon at her feet. "Uh… yes?"

"Hello, ma'am, I'm sorry to trouble you, but I-"

"I don't have any cash, sorry," she said hurriedly, sounding almost embarrassed as she began to walk away. Alright, not off to a great start, but not unsalvageable.

"Oh, nono, I've actually got the opposite problem!"

This caught her attention. She stopped and turned to look at him again.

"This parking meter doesn't take cash and only takes a card and I do have cash on me but I left my card at home. Would you be able to put the ticket on your card and I'll give you the cash back? I'll even give you the money upfront if you'd like, with interest if I can interest you." Some light little wordplay to cap off what he was pretty sure was a reasonable offer. Renee had always insisted that he was charming in his own Howard-y way - or at the very least had the capacity to turn it on and charm people when he needed to - so if she were here, she'd probably be expecting a yes just as much as he was right now.

But the stranger again looked embarrassed. "I'm sorry, but I, uh… I have no use for cash."

...Huh. His mind ground to a half. She wasn't being rude about it or anything, it just hadn't crossed his mind that she'd have any reason to tell him no.

"But… it's… cash. It's bound legal tender." If he did indeed have that charm Renee saw in him, he didn't have it now. He pulled a wad of money out of his pocket; now that he was dealing more with American currency, he was starting to understand why a dollar was called a buck: America had followed Mother England's lead of having a ruling class of deer for the longest time, and consequently most of the dead presidents on the money had antlers, barring scant exceptions like Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Hefferson. Howard was presently consulting a Lincoln. "Isn't that what it says on the money? 'For all debts, public and private'?"

The woman simply gestured glumly towards the pay box. "Apparently not all debts. Not anymore. And, uh…" She seemed to glance around before continuing as if she was about to say something embarrassing. "... don't take this the wrong way, sir, but I don't think money printed for someone your size would be quite so useful to someone like me."

...Okay, that made more sense. That was a good reason to decline. Heck, that was the entire reason why this meter didn't accept cash at all, now wasn't it? Still didn't help him very much, though. "I see," was all he could think to say.

But this elephant did seem to harbor some compassion. She saw how dejected the raccoon looked and made a counteroffer. "You know… what we could do is… can you just repay me electronically?"

Howard winced. "What? Like… wire money to your bank account?"

She chuckled awkwardly. "Oh, no - does anybody still do that? I meant with an app! Do you have PayPaw?"

Howard winced in an entirely different way. "Uh… do you mean PayPal?"

"PayPaw," she said plainly, then looked like she was thinking about something. "...You're not from around here, are you?"

He put on a gentle smirk. "That obvious?"

She nodded. "It's the same service, but we call it PayPaw here."

"...Huh," he muttered as he looked around at nothing at all. "I didn't know that was an American thing, I assumed it was everywhere."

Now she looked slightly less amused; still friendly, but growing impatient. "Not all of America. Here. A lot of companies rebrand here. We kind of do our own thing in this city."

"...Interesting." Howard was again looking around waywardly as he processed this incongruity. Well, that explained the beer rack at the liquor store. Come to think of it, why didn't Molson come down here and try to brand itself as Moleson? If this PI thing didn't work out, he should try to get himself a job as the head of their marketing team.

"So, uh… do you have… , I guess it would be for you?" the stranger asked.

"Oh, sure," said the raccoon as he snapped back into the present. "Do you want to write down your information so I can send the difference over next time I'm at a computer?"

Now she was the one giving a moderately disgusted look. "Don't you have it on your phone?"

Ah, Howard saw what she was getting at now. As he began fishing in his pocket, he said, "Oh, well… about that…" and produced a small cell phone which he then flipped open to make his point.

The elephant looked like that was the most depressing thing she'd ever seen, which matched her tone when she said "You know what? Alright. I'll take the cash. I've gotta go to the bank soon anyway."

And so they conducted the transaction after all. She walked around the barrier into the parking lot and started pushing some buttons on the highest screen with her trunk. He thanked her but didn't say much more until she needed to ask him a question.

"It needs a plate number, what state's your license plate? Oregon, California, or Other?"

"Other."

"Alright. What state?"

"...Is British Columbia an option?"

The elephant made an ooh! face as though she'd just met someone exotic. "Canadian, huh?"

"Guilty as charged. I know how much you yanks wanna keep us dirty canucks out, but I found a way in!"

She giggled a little as she kept pressing buttons. "Well, what brings you to Zootopia?"

He shrugged, but with a smile. "Oh, you know. Work. Opportunity. I guess you could say, the American Dream."

She chuckled again; perhaps his so-called charm was working. "Well, so long as you behave yourself," she said, "we're happy to have ya."

"Thank you. And I intend to." Well, this small talk was suddenly going well, might as well keep it going. "I've gotta say… this city doesn't seem like any place I've ever been before." Of course, he hadn't been many places because he'd always been broke, but he didn't need to clarify that.

"Well, we strive to be unique!" the elephant beamed with civic pride. "Uh… tell me, I'm curious, what's the first thing that stands out about this place to you?"

Howard looked around for inspiration. "Well, off the top of my head, those rodent walkways are a nice touch."

"Those? Oh, those are new! Like… literally put in two summers ago. The rodent community actually has their own little designated district near downtown, but they were complaining that they felt boxed in up in there, so they started rolling those out so they could safely get across more of town. Still have a lot of the city that needs to be covered, but they got a lot of the major streets. If it has a mouse lane on the street, there's probably a mouse path along the sidewalk."

Howard looked back to the street. He hadn't even noticed it at first because nobody had been driving in it, but what he'd originally thought was a bike lane turned out to be a rodents' car lane.

"Of course, for somebody, ahem, my size, I'd wish they put them a little higher off the ground, they're kind of a tripping hazard for me where they are… or they could use those tubes they have a lot of downtown, but apparently those are a safety hazard so they're trying to phase them out, I think…"

"Tubes?"

"Yeah, like… I hope I'm not embarrassing myself by using a cartoon for reference, but you ever seen Futurama? Tubes like that, I guess, but… just for rodents. Suction tubes."

Howard was nodding along, inwardly focused as he tried to imagine such a thing. "Well we definitely don't have something like that back home… oh, wait, speaking of home! You still need my license plate number?"

"So… about that…" The elephant suddenly looked dejected as the meter printed a ticket - a very big ticket. "Turns out provinces weren't an option in the system. They had Alaska and Hawaii but they didn't have British Columbia, go figure. So you're gonna have to put this in your window since they can't just go by plate."

She handed him the huge piece of paper. Howard was a little on the short side even for a raccoon and he was mostly at peace with that by now, but he couldn't help but feel emasculated that he tried to tuck the ticket under his armpit and it still dragged on the ground.

"Um… do you need help carrying that, sir?"

"Uh… no, no, I've got it, I'll manage," he said as he started off. "Thank you for everything, ma'am."

"Oh," she replied with another oddly nervous chuckle, "it's no problem, uh… I never did get your name, did I?"

Howard stopped and turned to her. He smiled and answered without thinking: "Wallace."

Oh, nice one, Howard, he thought to himself, fall back on your go-to fake name even when you're not working because it's just such a kneejerk reaction for you not to trust people.

"Well it's been a pleasure to meet you, Wallace," said the elephant as she waved and walked out of the parking lot. "I hope you find what you're looking for in this city!" And that wasn't an oversight, my friend: she really didn't give Howard her name, either.

Howard walked back to his car, thinking about what he ought to think about, when his mind was quickly made up for him.

"Um… officer? Sir? Officer! Sir!"

He scurried over, parking receipt dragging behind him, trying to get the attention of the addax sticking a ticket under his car's windshield wiper. Little did Howard know, he had absolutely gotten the officer's attention, the cop was just choosing to ignore him.

"Officer!" the raccoon repeated, "I just paid for the parking! I'm legal!"

"And before that, I saw you sitting in your car, in the passenger seat no less, not in any rush to pay for your parking," the addax said without looking at him, moving on to checking the neighboring cars. "And then I saw you taking your sweet time at the pay box before bumming a meter payment from that elephant lady. I was trying to be lenient, but you were just in no, no hurry."

It was a friendlier city than most, but it was still a city and encountering people like this was inevitable. "Well… no use for this, I guess," he said as he prepared to tear up the gigantic parking tab.

Now the officer looked at him. "No, you put that in your window anyway or I'm calling a tow truck in," he said with a pointed finger. "You wouldn't wanna be stranded this far from home, would you, British Columbia?"

The way the addax said that made it sound like if he hadn't pulled the old you ain't from around here line, he would have chosen something else to 'other' him. Hm, was this the kind of town where they'd prefer to call him a striper or would they just go with a lazier slur like rac? This didn't really seem like a trash panda kind of town. But the cop had made his point, and Howard indeed didn't care to be homeless, so he went and unlocked his car and put the ticket on the dashboard - which wasn't big enough for the ticket, but you could still clearly see and read it through the windshield.

He watched as the cop walked away down the line of cars, moving on towards the next size section, not an ounce of remorse for screwing over a stranger. Howard also couldn't help but notice that the addax didn't have a traditional pistol in his holster. Was this one of those cities that banned their cops from carrying lethal weaponry without approval? Sounded about right.

...Hey, how much was that ticket for, anyway? He took a look at it. Fifty bucks. Well, hopefully they took cash. Time to go out and explore this city.

Upon further thought, aesthetics be damned, it was just too warm out to be wearing a trenchcoat. To be expected, it was early June now and he'd been moving southwards, so he doffed his jacket and left it in his old sedan.

And he just started walking. Didn't know where he was going, fairly certain he was headed due east toward downtown but not sure of much more than that. He was good with maps, so as long as he had the one in his back pocket, he could still find his way back to his car even after getting as lost as mortally possible. And he welcomed getting lost; it was the only way to truly get to know this town.

In many ways, it was just like any other major city on the continent. Old brick buildings that seemed to date back to the Sixties or Seventies juxtaposed with newer, trendier construction all along broad, straight streets. In other ways, it had almost a European feel to it - not that he'd ever been to Europe, but from what he'd heard, their cities were a lot cozier, with a lot more local grocers and corner cafés, most of which were independent, intertwined with the neighborhood itself instead of separated from it like most American subdivisions. And then there were all the ways it simply felt unique, which lay less in the physical architecture and layout and more in the aura about it.

As he passed by a small bar, a pair of patrons, a yak and a gazelle, were around the corner by an alley, smoking cigarettes. Howard couldn't help but overhear their banter:

"...And this guy, I swear to God he goes, 'Some mammals are born to succeed, but most of us aren't so lucky… and there's nothing wrong with that, it's just some mammals are, some mammals aren't!' And I'm just sitting there thinking… you know what kind of mammal I think you are? I think you're the kind of mammal who just wants an excuse to wallow in your misery instead of trying to get your life together!"

"Sounds like this dude's got a victim complex."

"That's exactly what he has! He's got it in his head that he's always gonna be second-paw goods and he's not even bothering to rise above that. And you know what? Honest to God, the thought crossed my mind… maybe he's got legit reasons for why he is this way. Y'know, not excuses, but explanations for how he turned out this way. Maybe he's been trampled under hoof by everybody in his life and no mammal ever stopped to help him up, and I found myself thinking… I barely know this guy, maybe I should be the first mammal this Negative Nancy's ever known who'd actually stop and offer him a paw to lift him up off the ground, but… man, I got my own life to live, if this was a friend it'd be a different story, but I ain't got time to get to know this dude from scratch and solve his problems for him. I refuse to believe this Debbie Downer has a lot of friends, so I think he's gonna need to run across a mammal that charitable at some point in his life, but… I'm just not strong enough."

"I don't think most mammals would be, Mike, don't worry about it too much."

Howard couldn't help but find their choices of vocabulary… curious, to say the least. They weren't using any words wrong, just… eccentrically. Was this a them thing, or a this city thing? And he couldn't put his finger on what was so off about it. And as he was pondering, he couldn't help but hear hollering in the area.

"Hey, your fashion sense is stupid and it's killing the planet!" yelled a koala from across the street, glaring right at Howard.

"Were all the wasted resources and pollution put into that artificial material worth looking like you just walked out of a time period when systemic oppression was even worse than it is now!?" screamed a wolverine walking with her.

Howard came to a complete stop and stared back at them he legitimately didn't have a clue what they were on about. But then the koala cleared that up for him:

"Take those shoes and shove 'em up yer ass!"

Howard looked down at his shoes - cheaters of sorts, comfortable casual shoes designed like dress shoes to go with his button-down shirt, tie, and slacks, which were indeed all part of an intentional and cultivated mid-Twentieth-Century vibe - and then looked to see what the heck kind of socially-conscious shoes they were wearing.

...They weren't.

This, of course, prompted the raccoon to start observing the feet of everybody on the street. There were about a dozen other individuals within viewing distance; not a single one of them was wearing anything on their feet. Alright, this had a bigger sample size than the two guys using weird words, this couldn't have been a coincidence. Was this just the style in this town? Was everyone as opposed to footwear for moral and ethical reasons as the two people across the street were? Were shoes just too hard to sell in a city with so much size and species diversity that… no one bothered? This didn't make sense. Seriously, what would these people do if they stepped in bird shit?

...Wait. Howard stopped and just listened. He was able to tune out the hustle and bustle of the street and had his face turned towards the sky. This neighborhood may have been densely populated, but it still had a good number of trees.

...There was absolutely no chirping to be heard. Where the hell were all the birds in this town?

He was seriously wondering whether he had just stumbled into the Twilight Zone. This was starting to feel like a place that could not actually exist. But while part of his brain was still fixated on the shoe thing, his eyes lowered back down to Earth, and he noticed a fox squirrel passing by on the rodent walkway (also sporting naked feet).

"Uh, excuse me," Howard asked.

"Hey, what's up, man?" asked the squirrel; on his platform, he and Howard were nearly eye-level.

"Hey, uh, very weird question, but… I'm new in town, and I gotta ask… are there no birds in this city? I don't think I've seen or heard any since I drove in."

The squirrel did not take that question lightly. "...Birds!?" he asked like he was demanding an explanation for an injustice. "You're worried about fucking birds!? Naw, man, we don't have birds here because they'd kill and fucking eat a huge chunk of the population! You say you're from out of town? Where the hell are you from that just lets birds swoop on and devour their people!?"

Howard was at a loss for words. "Um… uh, don't most cities just have, um… like, regular pest control-?"

"We have pest control, it's called the Oregon and California National Guards working together to make sure no predatory birds get within twenty miles of the metro area!" The squirrel gestured with agitation towards the raccoon. "C'mon, man, you really think a big-ass eagle or something couldn't carry you away? I've heard stories of friggin' foxes and badgers getting carried away to Kingdom Come, you think you're exempt from that!?"

Some part of Howard agreed this fox squirrel made a good point, but… that still didn't address the fact that this city wasn't normal. "I… didn't mean eagles and hawks and vultures, I meant… you know, robins and sparrows and blue jays and stuff. Little harmless birds like that who just sit in trees and sing."

The stranger looked like he wanted to leap off that walkway and claw Howard's face off. "Right. Harmless birds that're still big enough to kidnap a little rodent child who leaves their mom's sight for two minutes and carry them back to their nest to chew up and regurgitate to their own babies. Which has happened before. Harmless. Right." The fox squirrel hopped on the conveyor and made his exit. "If you wanna go hang out with a blue jay, Mister Raccoon, you can hop on the first bus to bumblefuck."

...Well, in a roundabout way, that did manage to answer Howard's questions: yes, this city was lacking avian creatures by design and no, he wasn't losing his mind, this city wasn't normal in that regard. Alright, fine, no birds. And to be fair, he couldn't expect every city to be like Vancouver where they were basically using geese as messenger pigeons; controversial opinion, but Howard actually liked Canadian geese, and he'd even met a few of those mean old geezers who had allowed him to pet them. But whatever, he could live without some flying friends. So Howard kept walking.

And for a few blocks, nothing too interesting happened. The city he was seeing was plentifully interesting, but nothing really jumped off the page. But he must have been getting closer to downtown, because he was starting to encounter something he'd not yet encountered in this city.

"Step right up, we got discounted movies ovah heah! DVDs! Blu-Rays! Wanna kick it old school? We gots VHS tapes, too! Wicked low prices, way below the MSRSVP! How am I makin' a profit margin on these? Don't worrrrry about it! And comin' soon! Sidney Plus logins and passwohds! I ain't got 'em yet, but buy sumpthin' from me today, and you'll be first in line when I get 'em in stock!"

Street vendors.

Howard came across another alleyway wherein a small, svelte weasel was manning a ramshackle wooden stand with the aforementioned entertainment laid out on display. And a wolf seemed to be giving his business a fair shot, but didn't look too impressed.

"...These are children's movies," the browser said flatly.

"Hey!" the proprietor snapped. "They ain't children's movies, they's movies for all ages! These movies were made by adults, you really think a bunch a' grown-ups would spend all theyah time makin' a movie full a' kiddie crap they can't even enjoy themselves!? I'll have you know these movies stand the test a' time because theyah made for us matuah folks to enjoy, too!"

"Okay," the wolf said nonchalantly as he turned and walked away. "Fuckin' manchild-ass weirdo… Oh, excuse me, sir," he apologized to the raccoon half his height upon realizing he'd almost ran him over.

"Hey, who you callin' a manchild!?" the weasel hollered. "I'll have ya know I'm makin' a very shrewd business strategy heah by appealin' to the family mahket!"

This was none of Howard's business, so he kept walking past the alley.

"Hey, you! Come back here, I got somethin' for yas!"

That probably wasn't directed at Howard, right? Even if it was, Howard wasn't going to stop walking.

"Yeah, I see you!"

Actually, at this point, Howard was out of the raccoon's line of vision.

"Yeah, all dressed up and nowheah to go! I know you can heah me, rac!"

...Okay, that got his attention.

Howard went back to the movie stand. "I take it that was me you were talking to?"

"Of course I was talking to you!" said the weasel, wisely acting friendly again. "Because listen, Gramps, I can tell by yo' manner a' dress that you ain't exactly up to speed with modehn technology. So lemme help you out a little, eh? There's these newfangled things called…" He grabbed and held up a cassette copy of Meowana. "...video TAPES! And this right heah is Sidney's biggest animated featchah of 2016! - Theyah only animated featchah a' 2016, but I'm digressin'. And I'll tell ya what, Gramps: buy three - no, six a' these video TAPES, and I'll toss in a free… video TAPE playah!" True to his word, he produced a VCR from below the surface of the stand. And the wolf's comment made sense: most of the movies he had were Sidney or PixArts properties.

Howard obviously was not in the market to buy a VCR - nor would he have been even if he had a TV to connect it to in a house to plug it in - but he had a funny feeling that this guy wasn't in the mood to hear that. So he threw him a curveball.

"Just for the record, sir, I'm only thirty-two."

The weasel's face went puzzled. "Man, how you gonna tell me yaw youngah than me when yaw all dressed up like that!?"

The raccoon chuckled to himself. "Well, if it's that hard to believe, I can see myself out."

"Aw, naw, man, you gotta buy some a' these things! Are Blu-Rays more yuh bag?"

"You sure do have quite the selection," Howard mused, just to keep the peace.

"Of course he does," quipped a panda bear walking by on the street behind Howard, causing the raccoon to spin around in surprise. "He's a bootlegger."

"Aw, you say this like that's a bad thing!" the weasel retorted. "C'mon, youah people love bootleggin' stuff!"

The panda stopped and spun around himself to shoot daggers at the salesman. "The fuck is that supposed to mean!?" he growled, walking up to lean in and over the weasel. "I'd eat you alive right now if I were that type of bear… heh, but you're skinny enough to be a bamboo stick, so I'd watch your back if I were you…"

The panda gentleman then left the scene, leaving the raccoon alone with the weasel. And Howard was struck by a funny notion: sketchy as this guy was, he might be the perfect local to help him get a read on the city.

"The nerve a' that guy! He prolly works some dead-end office job and thinks that makes him bettah than me!" the weasel scoffed before turning to again address his prospective customer. "So what'll it be, boss? Can I ring ya up for six a' one and half a dozen a' the other?"

But the raccoon just locked eyes with him, trying to put on a smile that was neither too chipper nor too faint. "You know, I'm kind of a businessman myself."

But this gentleman truly must have had the salesman's gene, because he was in no mood for casual conversation; he simply raised an eyebrow, skeptical of where this conversation was going. "Is that so? Whaddya sell, rac?"

"Oh, I don't sell stuff so much as I sell my services."

The weasel looked disgusted as though the raccoon had just exposed himself. "Is that why you're dressed that way? Do rac chicks like guys who dress like they just walked outta a movie from the Forties!?"

"What!?" It took Howard a second before he realized how this stranger has misinterpreted his words in the lewdest way possible. Well, so much for Howard being charming. "No, no, no, I… I didn't mean-"

"I was gonna say, you ain't handsome enough to be no gigolo!"

...Oh, harsh, dude. But Howard was used to it. "No, I'm… I'm aware that I'm too ugly for something like that. In fact… I'm the opposite! I'm so plain-looking, I blend in. That's why I'm a-"

"You blend in dressed like that?"

"...That's why I'm a private eye."

This seemed to trigger a fight-or-flight reaction in the salesman. "Oh, no!" he hollered as he pulled a cardboard box out from under the stand and started shoveling all the discs and tapes in. "I ain't dealin' with no cop! You best get the hell outta heah if ya know what's good for yas!"

Howard just closed his eyes, turned his head down, and pinched the bridge of his snout. "Why does everybody think I'm a cop…"

"Because even if you ain't workin' with 'em, youah doin' theyah work!"

"The cops don't even like me! They hate me because I do their job better than they do!"

"And there ya got it!" the weasel barked as he folded his box shut. "There's this rule that everybody else knows: mind yaw own business! But you and the cops both made a whole career outta breakin' that rule! You's guys need to learn to leave us hardworkin' mammals alone!"

Howard knew it was hard to argue with that. But not impossible. "But you're not hurting anybody, are you? Well… besides Hollywood-"

"Exactly!" The weasel was struggling to carry a box nearly as big as he was; it might be more accurate to say he was pushing it. "And theyah makin' enough monies! I'm stealin' from the mouths a' decadents foh the benefit a' people who can't afford ta' buy a flick at full price every time! I'm like a vig-it-ilante, like Adam Bell or sumpthin'! I ain't hurtin' no one who don't deserve ta' be hurt - like you will be if ya don't leave me alone and stick to yaw own personal beeswax!"

But Howard was still calm and composed. "Well, there you go. You're not hurting anybody, so I probably wouldn't be breathing down your neck anyway. We're on the same page: I only go after people who're actually hurting somebody - just like you."

"I just said I ain't hurtin' nobody, you fuckin' deaf!?"

A deep breath, then: "...Just like you do."

The stranger took a moment to parse that out, then seemed to relax to a certain degree, but was still more tense than Howard would care for. "What kinda mammals you even investigate then, rac?"

"Mostly cheating spouses… you don't have a wife and a girlfriend who you're hoping will never meet, do you?" He tried to half-wink with that line to augment the joke.

"What, you sayin' I'm to ugly to get a broad!?"

God, was this dude paranoid or just insecure? "Alright," the raccoon conceded as he started off, "I'll see myself out then -"

"I just wanna know why youah tellin' me all this," the weasel said to stop him. Apparently this guy genuinely wanted to know if he didn't let Howard just walk off.

So Howard told him. "I'm starting to think it was a bad idea myself, but I was just wondering whether, businessman to businessman, you could give me some advice about operating in this city. Or whether I even have a chance of getting any traction here."

With the look this huckster was giving him, Howard thought the weasel had expected him to confess that he really was here to sneak on him - which wouldn't have made one modicum of sense since Howard had originally wanted to ignore this guy altogether before he insisted they engage in commerce, but this weasel didn't seem the most sound in mind anyway. But whatever this gentleman was thinking, he gave a sly reply: "Listen, rac… if you was really good at yaw business, you oughta be able to succeed anywhere, don'tcha think?"

Howard had to nod at that. "On some level, that's true, for sure… but so far in this city, I've…" He was struggling to put the weird gist he'd gotten from the people here into words. "I've been getting a lot of mixed signals from people so far. In some ways, they seem impossibly friendly and polite, like they wouldn't wanna get into a gritty business like hiring someone to get photographic evidence that their spouse is cheating, maybe they'd be too optimistic to even think they're cheating… but then the mask comes off and everyone seems secretly angry and cynical, like they wouldn't trust hiring a stranger to get photographic evidence of their spouse cheating. Is… does that make sense?"

The weasel's expression had not changed at all. "The mammals here are mammals. Ya evah met a mammal? They's the same as mammals anywhere else deep down."

Well, the mammals I've met don't call themselves mammals in everyday speech like that. "Let me rephrase that: could a guy like me make a living in this town, or is it just not that kind of town?"

Apparently Howard was coming across as pathetic, because this weasel was starting to relax, taking a more relaxed pose and stepping forward a little from his box to give the raccoon a smarmy look. "Listen, bud… youah in Zootopia! Where anybody can be anything! You wanna be a private dick? You go be a private dick. Just don't do it around me."

Not the most helpful answer, but Howard didn't know what else he could have expected. "Well… good to know people believe in the motto, I guess…"

But then the weasel's look got even smarmier, as he walked all the way back to his stand and leaned forward, elbows on the table, head propped up by his paws. "Y'know what, though? Hm… gimme a sec…" He pulled out his phone - even this lowlife had a smartphone, Howard realized he really ought to invest in something better - and seemed to consult an app or two before pocketing it. "Yeah, just as I thought! There's this place just down the street wheah a bunch a' scorned wives meet up to sit around and bitch about theyah unfaithful men! It's supposed to be a yoga place but eh, they ain't hardly doin' no yoga. Maybe go give 'em a holler, eh? Nothin' ventuhed, nothin' gained!"

…Interesting proposal. A bit random and out of the blue, but if this was legit, Howard would take it. Can't pass up an opportunity when it's staring you in the face, now can you?

"Uh… sure! Might be a good idea. Where, uh, where is this place exactly? What's it called, and how do I get there?"

"Oh, it's called, uh, Yoga Pants or sumpthin' simple like that. Ya can't miss it! So ya see that street ovah theyah?" the weasel asked, pointing to a street running parallel to the alley they were in.

"Yeah?"

"Head thataway, let's see… six streets down? Six streets down! You'll see it!"

The way this guy was smiling, he was either pulling a fast one on Howard, or he'd magically and suddenly gained respect for a fellow underground businessman. Howard could see it going either way. But you know what? Fine, he'd play along. He needed to explore this city anyway, he had his wits about him so he wouldn't fall for an obvious trap, and if he had a bad gut feeling about something, he just wouldn't do it. And given how erratic this weasel had been so far… hell, maybe that was the closest to a genuine smile he was capable of giving.

"Hey, I appreciate it," Howard said with a wave as he walked away toward this yoga studio.

"Hey, not a problem!" the strange little weasel waved back. "And welcome to Zootopia!"

Howard rounded the corner and got to hoofing it. It didn't take him much longer after that to realize that this wasn't going to be as straightforward as the weasel had made it seem. He was walking northwards towards the Rainforest District, and the weasel had told him to cross six streets. Trouble was, he could clearly see the district boundary four blocks away, where the buildings gave way to a literal jungle of trees that he initially thought was a park and where the street began a steep incline. Which made sense to some degree, they were nearing the mountain in the center of town. Howard pulled out his map; there were a lot of very windy roads throughout the Rainforest District, implying topography. This couldn't all be a park. But if this was all just a regular part of town, he had to get familiar with it eventually.

As he crossed the fourth street and the bridge over the small canal immediately next to it, he quickly realized a "block" here wouldn't be equivalent to a block in Savanna Central. With the curvature of the street and the slope of the hill, he couldn't even see the next intersection from the base of the incline. But he pressed on, telling himself that he'd likely have to walk up these ridiculous boulevards eventually so he might as well get used to it. But as he did, he started thinking more than not that perhaps this was indeed all a wind-up. But why? The stranger wasn't gaining anything from it, it didn't make sense that the weasel would send him on a wild goose chase just to fuck with him.

By the time that Howard reached the next intersection, it was clear to him that the weasel had sent him on a wild goose chase just to fuck with him. That weirdo was probably having a laugh and a half just imagining how thoroughly he'd inconvenienced this random raccoon for no constructive reason. And what an inconvenience it was. Howard's back was screaming in pain; he was mostly okay to walk upright, but one doesn't exactly walk perfectly upright when walking up a ten-degree angle, and hunching forward to give himself some semblance of momentum was just wrenching all the muscles and nerves in his back that had never properly healed. He was seething through his teeth trying not to scream - not that many people would have heard him, since all the homes and businesses in this area were very spread out and very far back from the curb. Thank Apes he'd left his trenchcoat in his car, though, because it was starting to feel like a real jungle in there; as soon as he'd crossed that bridge, it had suddenly gotten very muggy and very humid very quickly, and he may have just about collapsed from exhaustion had he been weighed down by it.

He still almost passed out from sheer fatigue by the time he got to the next block, at which point he was so overcome with discomfort that he almost forgot to look for a yoga studio - and another reason he'd almost forgotten to look for a yoga studio was because there were no buildings around that could even possibly resemble a yoga studio. There was a small Chevron gas station and convenience store at one corner (or, no, wait… Shepron?) and that was it. Again, Howard had sort of expected this by now, but this wouldn't have been such a bummer if not for all the physical anguish Howard had to endure just to discover the deception. Jesus, if the U.S. was the closest the modern world would ever see to a libertarian paradise, that weasel surely embodied that spirit: screwing people over just because he enjoyed doing so and because there wasn't a law telling him that he couldn't. Or maybe that guy was just stupid and gave him shitty directions, this was also a possibility.

The poor raccoon just sat down on the lip of concrete and panted through his mouth, trying not to make any vocal noise but still letting some faint moans and groans of agony slip out. Seattle and Portland hadn't put up this much of a fight. For a few minutes he sat there alone as the odd resident walked by behind him, the raccoon quietly thinking to himself that if this is where his future lay, he'd sooner return to his past.

Across the street, he saw a pair of capybaras walking along. One consulted their watch and pulled out and deployed an umbrella immediately afterwards, the other following suit, both going through the motions as though it were as natural as breathing. This struck Howard as odd, as it wasn't raining, and upon looking towards the sky, and from what he could see through the trees, it seemed perfectly clear anyway.

Then he noticed a perforated pipe running across the canopy.

Then it started raining. First a gentle drizzle, but then a full-on downpour.

"...Oh, God DAMMIT!" he couldn't help but scream at the top of his lungs as he quickly got soaked. Maybe he should have brought his jacket after all.

"Hey! There's no need for that kind of language, sir!" barked an offended jaguar walking on the sidewalk behind him, fully prepared and wearing a light raincoat. "You have nobody to blame but yourself if you got caught in the rain, there's even an app you can download on your phone that tells you the schedule and gives you alerts when the city turns the waterworks on."

And in an instantaneous fraction of a second, it clicked with him: oh, this nutty city didn't just design this neighborhood like a rainforest, they built it as an entire artificial rainforest, and those pipes had been the sprinklers. But that burst of an epiphany came and passed, and now he had to attend to this stranger's rude presumptions.

"No!" Howard shot back, "It's not an app I can just download to my phone! We can't all afford smartphones!" And he began digging through his pockets in search of his dumb-phone to demonstrate for the second time that day that modern convenience wasn't necessarily a gift of his.

At no point had the jaguar stopped walking. "Sounds like a personal problem," was all she said, not even looking at him, before walking off.

But Howard couldn't focus his energy on this individual. As he sat there on the curb, his clothes getting even more waterlogged, he came to realize that he'd left his phone in his coat pocket back in his car.

-IllI-

It took him over an hour to find and get back to the parking lot where his old Honda Civic was, by which point it was about forty-five minutes overdue. Thankfully there wasn't a second ticket on the window; perhaps another meter maid had seen the previous ticket, didn't look too closely at it, and just assumed it was for the current infraction. It seemed like this city was finally throwing him a bone.

He unlocked his car and slipped his trenchcoat back on. So… where to next? San Francisco? Sacramento? Hell, Reno? All he knew was that this city was just too weird for him. At once too friendly and too mean-spirited, and chock full of bizarre lingo and customs that he'd never encountered before and might never fully wrap his head around; if not for the Oregon plates on all the vehicles, he'd swear he was in another country. He knew better than to think the universe was giving him some sort of sign, but with this much bad luck on his first day, he just had a bad gut feeling about this place that he thought would be unwise to ignore. He knew he barely fit in in other places (he reflected, as he put his trenchcoat from the Thirties over his clothes from the Fifties and moved the beer bottles from sometime between the Sixties and the Eighties so he could sit down in his car from the Nineties and search for his phone which was at least ten years out of style); he seemed to be even more profoundly out of place here. It would take some disproportionately good luck in the next five minutes to get him to change his mind and keep giving this city a chance - and actual luck like the world finally being merciful and giving him a break, not the kind of "luck" where he'd have to bust his ass to work for it while still not being fairly compensated for the bullshit some higher power may or may not have thrown his way and wait.

One missed call. And a voicemail to boot.

It was from a 624 number, which he was fairly certain wasn't a metro Zootopia area code. This had to be a telemarketer, right? Or a robocaller, something trying to steal his identity. Hello, your car's warranty is expiring! - of course it is, sweetheart, the damned thing was one of the last cars on the road built in a year beginning with the number 1. Well, might as well listen to the voicemail and have a laugh at it.

"Hello, this message is for Howard… Lotter? Low-tore? ...This message is for the gentleman named Howard. My name is Nick, I saw your flier at the Safeway by Barnstable and Furlong…"

*A.N.* Hiya everybody, thanks for reading Chapter Three. If I can trouble you for a few minutes more, I've got a couple of announcements I'd like to make.

First of all, a shout-out to IronicSnap, who (as of this writing) is the only other person to write a Backbone fic (hey, call me foolish, but I honest to God thought that game would have blown up in popularity among this community and now it seems it's missed its chance). If you don't wanna wait around to see if and when I give Howard and Renee the happy ending we all wanted for them, give his one-shot a look to get your fix sooner than later. It's a quickie that only took me, like, forty-five minutes to read, and I am a slooowwwww reader (hence why, guilty as I feel about it, I don't read as much fic as I'd like). Show him some love. I also think he's done some Zootopia/Sly Cooper fics if that tickles yer fancy.

Secondly… shootin' my shot in the damn dark… this fic is open for collaborators and co-writers. I'd like to work with somebody who has a pretty good handle not only on the Zootopia source material but also the fandom and fanfic culture, like someone I could consult about the city's geography, its more minor characters, whether an idea has already been done in a popular fic I haven't seen, etc. Compared to a lot of writers in this fandom, I hardly know anything about the extended mythos, so I could use some catching up. In my head, this might be a good opportunity if there's someone out there who wants to be a Zoot writer but hasn't found the inspiration to do it yet. Because while I've got great ideas for this work, it's still a secondary project to my passion fic, L'EDgendary, so quicker output here would require a sort of ghostwriter. I don't expect many takers immediately, so this offer is staying open in perpetuity; if this sounds like something that would interest you or someone you know, whether you're seeing this in July 2021 or September 2024, hit me up - comment here, PM me on FF, or guess my Gmail and contact me there after you prank me by adding my email to a bunch of random mailing lists, and we'll try to hammer something out.

Alright, peace and love, everyone. -Doby