by Tom Jones
During the year that the wolf lived with the fox at Fox Armaments, Arcades talked a lot to Jason about Biblical principles, and one topic that had been brought up in the past was the concept of free will. Arcades had told the wolf that God allows for people to make their own choices, whether they be good or bad, because He loves them enough to give them the ability to do so. Without free will, then it would not be possible for somebody to love another person since love always required the two parties to choose such a disposition. Jason remembered hearing his brother from a long time ago always mention that if God were real, then He would not allow any evil to occur in the world. After hearing what Arcades had to say on the matter, however, Jason came to realize that if God were to intervene every single time something bad was about to happen, then people would not really have the ability to make their own decisions. Without their own decisions, then people might as well be just as good as the mindless anthros he had encountered from the Foundation.
Jason still could not help but notice that Jackie seemed to be sort of an in-between the likes of a normal anthro and an anthro which had undergone extensive conditioning at the Foundation. The wolf knew that what the Foundation did was void of love, but at the same time, he was definitely made aware by the fox as to how the Foundation did allure people to practically sign themselves up in the first place: The Foundation made great efforts to lure in members of anthro communities which professed themselves as being involved with communities of ‘alternative forms of love’. Jason knew that he was somewhat of a member of such a community for himself before he met Arcades, back when he was still a homosexual. Though he did not understand what the issue was in his previous years before he was Born Again, he now understood the problem with such alternative lifestyles: Though they would constantly proclaim their mission statement of universal and unconditional love for all people, they did not really have any standards for what love actually was. According to a growing number of members in such anthro communities, love could mean physical and psychological abuse to another person, and the Foundation did exactly that to the anthros they enticed to volunteer themselves. To those same anthros, love also meant not ever telling anybody that there was danger in doing certain activities.
Jason knew that if it wasn’t for Arcades, then he would have likely never even considered being Born Again. The wolf could not imagine where he would be if the fox did not treat him the way he did. Jason knew that Arcades genuinely loved him. Even though the fox did not let the wolf have everything he may have deeply desired, Jason began to understand why the fox upheld such boundaries. If Arcades were to let Jason do literally whatever he wanted, then would he really love him? After all, if Jason truly had his way with the fox without any intervention, then what would be of the wolf? If Arcades never told Jason that all sapient beings were corrupted by sin and needed a Savior, then would he really love him? After all, the mainstream opinion had always been the opposite: Sapient beings were always naturally good, and that people who do wrong were somehow different from the rest of the people who were somehow good people. The wolf began to question what really was a good person, but he could not really think of somebody who was entirely perfect. After all, everybody was guilty of doing one thing or another, and Jason knew that he was definitely not perfect himself. Jason remembered reading the Bible, and the message in the Bible almost directly contradicted the popular message repeated by almost every single person he had encountered in life. The Bible states that every sapient being is corrupted by sin and desires evil, and without Jesus as an eternal sacrifice, then it would be impossible for anybody to be good enough to earn a spot in heaven. Everybody deserves to go to hell, but God still put on human flesh and died on the Cross so that those who repent of their sins and trust in the eternal sacrifice of Jesus would be granted eternal life.
“I think I may have found something,” Arcades spoke, and the wolf’s train of thought was interrupted. Jason realized that for practically the entire time, he was staring directly at Jackie, but the vixen did not seem to mind too much. Perhaps Jackie was used to people looking at her for extended periods of time. The wolf blinked a couple times and shook his head before turning around. As the wolf turned around to see what Arcades was preparing to tell him, he consciously thought about what the vixen was thinking while seeing a wolf staring directly at her. Jason was not even admiring her breasts or anything, he was merely looking directly at her face, but not even making eye contact with her. The wolf was also unsure of how long he was looking at Jackie, but he figured that it probably would be a good time to look at something else. After all, Jason was not intending to intimidate the vixen, even though he was a decent deal larger than she was in both height and width. Jason finally stood at attention to the fox, “What d’ya have, mate?” Arcades had a text file opened up with coordinates on then. Before the fox could tell the wolf that the numbers on his screen were coordinates, Jason already guessed for himself, “Oh, are those coordinates of something?” Arcades nodded his head, “I believe so. I’m going to go and put these into Google Maps to see where they put it. Before I do that, though, I’m going to need a VPN. Luckily, they already have one installed on this computer.”
Jason did know some about computers, but he did not know what a VPN was, “What’s a VPN supposed to do?” Arcades opened the application to launch the VPN, and he explained the program’s functionality to the wolf while he began the process of enabling it, “VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. In layman’s terms, it makes it so that people trying to track you down on the Internet have a harder time at doing so; it masks your location.” The wolf knew that all three of the anthros did not plan on living at the house, “What’s so bad about them knowing where this computer is? We don’t live here, and we don’t have any intention of doing so.” Arcades watched the screen as the computer initialized the VPN, “Well, they’d still know that somebody in this town still sent the information out.” Jason returned with another objection, “Yeah? Well, somebody in this town who works for the Foundation died today.” Arcades knew that what the wolf was saying was indeed true, but he still replied by saying, “You are indeed right, Jason. However, I do not believe that the Foundation is completely sure as to who killed that guy. Sure, it probably would not be too hard for them to figure that out, but at the same time, I think me putting these coordinates on the Internet would be a bit more concrete. After all, we were kinda responsible for leaking the original locations of the Foundation facilities in the first place, and I’m pretty sure that they know that we were the ones behind that. Anybody could be to blame for killing somebody else for any reason, but I’d say it would be safe to say that less people would probably be to blame for leaking the location of a black site on the Internet.”
With the VPN finally loaded, Arcades opened up the computer’s web browser, Mozilla Firefox, and he navigated to Google Maps. The fox also commented on the computer’s default browser, “Interesting. I’m surprised that this computer doesn’t have Tor on it, but I guess it's kinda pointless to do that if you don’t have Linux.” Jason could have sworn he heard the fox mention these two computer-related names in the past, but he was not entirely sure what the original context was. Regardless, the wolf was not really prepared to hear Arcades give a lecture on the software he was using on the computer, so he waited until the fox opened up the search bar on Google Maps to input the coordinates he had. The fox copied the coordinates into the search bar from the Windows clipboard, and he pressed the enter key. Within seconds, the virtual model of Earth moved and settled on what seemed to be a featureless plain in the middle of the United States.
The fox was already a bit suspicious due to the lack of anything notable from his search on the map, “Hmmm…. You know what this reminds me of, Jason?” The wolf looked at the computer’s screen, and he only saw an empty plain, “What’s that? You think they’re hiding something?” Arcades nodded, “I sure do. This reminds me of back in ‘28 when I was originally on the search for the first
Foundation facilities. You know what was special about them?” Jason thought the fox was going to answer his own question directly after asking it, but once he noticed that the fox was waiting for the wolf’s response, Jason said, “They’re all blank?” Arcades gave a confident nod, “Exactly. They were all blank just like this. They’re also secluded enough from anywhere major.” Arcades scrolled around the general area of the coordinate marker he had placed on the virtual map, and he once again confirmed yet another similarity, “Yep, and this one’s exactly the same as well. The coordinates lead to nothing, and there’s nothing for a good few miles in the surrounding areas.” Jason asked the fox a question, “How many coordinates did you find on the computer?” Arcades gave his answer, “This is the only one I could find. Surprisingly, the computer did not seem to have too much saved on it. I checked all of the usual locations one would save files, and I also looked through a few more folders just to see whether or not they were being used to save files. Y’know, like system files used by the operating system. Not many people would decide to save their stuff there, but you kinda really don’t know that especially if your job is to keep something hidden.”
Jason was surprised to hear that the fox had seemingly searched the computer in such a short period of time, “Goodness, mate. I didn’t think you’d be able to look it all over that fast. I was about to go on walkabout in the house for a little bit until you’d finish.” Arcades was rather surprised the search did not take an extensive time for himself as well, “Yeah, I know. Like I said, this computer did not even have too much on it to begin with. There were a few folders with basically just nothing inside of them, and then we just have this single text document that has these coordinates in them.” Jason nodded slowly, “Reckon that’s a good find? What are you going to do with it?” Arcades was unaware of the bounty CDI had on the people who took their MAV-29, “I’m going to do what happened in the past: I’m going to post these coordinates to as many sites as I can think of. I’m sure one person or another is going to check things out. I’d say there are two possibilities for this set of coordinates: We either found the location of a Foundation facility, or we found just a dummy set of coordinates that actually just lead to an empty field. However, knowing the Foundation, I’m going to say that we might have just found their coordinates.”
The wolf briefly scratched his neck before speaking, “Why can’t we check it out for ourselves? Wouldn’t that be better closure for us?” Arcades let out a little sigh; the fox was not annoyed by the wolf’s question, but he did desire the same closure that the wolf was mentioning. Arcades spoke to the wolf to let him know why they would be unable to travel to the location for themselves, “It’s way too far for us to go. We already are not in a stable situation as it stands, and we would only be putting ourselves at more risk than we really need to if we were to go all the way out there. Besides, we’re supposed to protect Jackie, and I don’t think we’d be able to do that if something happens to us as a result of us two trying to take on the Foundation. We don’t even know what we’d be up against, and you remember those guys who attacked us back at home, don’t you?” Jason returned a sigh as well, for the wolf knew that there was not really anything he and the fox could personally do about the Foundation facility they potentially found. Jason also knew that it was not even confirmed that a facility did indeed exist where the coordinates pointed to in the first place. It would not be that good if the two of them went for broke and traveled such a distance only to find out that they literally went to the middle of nowhere. The wolf spoke, “Perhaps we can’t fight all of our battles.” Arcades nodded, “That’s right. All we can do is just post these coordinates to as many places as we can. I bet somebody will decide to check it out eventually. It’s the most we can do. We’re not even equipped to take down the Foundation even if they were right outside this house as well. You remember what they had last time, right? We barely made it out of that last facility we went to back in ‘28.”
Jason slowly nodded, and he finally decided to let go of the thought of traveling to the suspected Foundation facility, “I guess we’ll leave this up to the Lord. If the Lord deems that people will know about this facility, then that’ll be up to Him. How about that? We post it about the Internet, and we let God decide the rest of it?” Arcades smiled, “There you go. That’s honestly the best thing we can do in this scenario. Sure, the Foundation isn’t good at all, but we can really only do so much. We can only do so much, but God is more powerful than all of us. If He wants whatever it is to be gone, then we’ll just have to leave it up to Him to do that.” Jason found that Arcades practically reiterated exactly what he just said, “Well then… I guess we don’t have any more objections. How about we go ahead and post those coordinates around, mate? Then we can get out of here and not have to think about it anymore.” Arcades nodded, and he felt that posting the coordinates was probably going to be the best closure that both of them were going to get. After all, they realized that even if someone were to go and visit the suspected Foundation facility and destroyed it, neither of them would likely hear about it. They would just simply have to trust that whatever God willed would inevitably occur.
Arcades opened up a few public websites after making sure that the VPN was still enabled, and he began to copy-paste the coordinates with no context. The fox spent about fifteen minutes posting the coordinates to different websites while both Jason and Jackie did nothing but just watch as the fox clicked around and pressed the keyboard shortcut that would paste the coordinates saved in the computer’s clipboard. As Arcades continued to continually paste the link over and over again, Jason began to feel more and more relieved. The wolf did not exactly know why he was feeling relieved, but he figured that he was beginning to accept the closure that came accompanied with seeing perhaps the location of the last remaining Foundation facility posted all over the Internet. Jason, much like Arcades, was just about ready to finish thinking about the Foundation once and for all. Perhaps this time, their desire would become a reality, and they would finally be free from the Foundation and all of the Foundation’s associated organizations. Both anthros were sick of being on the run, and they were just about ready to settle down and see the end of this entire ordeal.
When the fox finished, he moved his cursor around the screen one last time to make sure that he did not forget to post the coordinates to any website that he could think of, but he could not think of anywhere else he needed to upload the coordinates. Arcades closed the web browser, opened up the Windows start menu, and he clicked the button to turn off the computer. All three anthros were silent as they watched the computer power down, and once the screen went completely blank, the fox closed the lid. The room fell silent, but Jason broke the silence by patting the fox on the back and saying, “Welp Kurt, looks like you did it. I bet this is a bit different compared to what we’re used to when dealing with the Foundation, huh?” Arcades slowly turned his head and body to look up at the wolf, “I’d say it’s a bit easier than what we had to deal with before. I’d say it’s better than being taken to the Foundation ourselves.” Jason closed his eyes and shook his head, “At least we hopefully won’t have to deal with that again. But you know, something about this feels different to me. I can’t exactly describe it, but watching you send those coordinates out gave me some kind of relief I didn’t really feel before when we took down those other Foundation facilities. Can you say the same?”
Arcades took a deep breath, and he did sort of notice the effect which Jason was describing, “You know what? I kinda do feel it a little bit. If you’re like me though, you’re probably just hoping that this is the last thing we’re ever going to do in regards to the Foundation. I’m sick of running, and I just want it to be over with.” Jason grabbed the fox by the shoulders and lifted him up, “Well then, Kurt. How about we treat it as if we got what we wanted? We don’t even need to worry about the Foundation unless they come looking for us, and something about this, I just have a really good feeling abo
ut. We may not see it, but I really think that we’ll have our true victory here.” Arcades smiled, and he came in closer to the wolf and embraced him. As the two anthros hugged, the fox briefly looked towards the vixen and said, “Come on in, Jackie. You’re part of our family.” The vixen displayed a genuine smile on her face, and she joined the group hug. Arcades spoke aloud again once all three anthros were embracing one another, “Somebody’s going to see this. We’ve done our part. We’ve done everything we can, and we’ve done everything we needed to do. We don’t have to worry about this anymore.” Jason began to chuckle a bit, “Hehe… Pretty good, ain’t it, Kurt? Somebody indeed will see those coordinates. We don’t need to think about it anymore. We’re done.”
The group embrace continued for a couple more minutes, but once they were done, Arcades made a suggestion, “How about we get going? Let’s go back to the hotel room, and we’ll get some rest. It’s been quite the day today, hasn’t it?” Jason, still with a smile on his face, nodded his head, “Bloody oath, mate. Let’s just pray that this’ll be the last time we’ll ever have to deal with these people.” Arcades gave a confident nod in return, “You bet. I’ll be sure to pray about this tonight, but for now, let’s just get going.” The three anthros exited the house for the last time, and they looked up at the sky to see that it was now completely dark outside. The fox spoke as he opened up the driver’s door of the 4Runner, “Can you imagine what would’ve happened if we never found out about the Foundation in the first place?” Jason replied once he entered the vehicle for himself, “Well… For one, you may not have met me. After all, I think the Foundation had something to do with the reason why you were out in Alaska in the first place, wasn’t it?” Arcades sat in the driver’s seat, and he put his seatbelt on, “Hmmm… Perhaps, but I didn’t really know about the Foundation back then.” Before the fox could say anything else, Jackie spoke up from the rear seat, “Hey. We’re done with the Foundation, aren’t we? We don’t even need to talk about it anymore.” Arcades and Jason both paused at this point; they were not expecting Jackie to say anything. The fox looked directly at the vixen, and he had a smile on his face. When the fox turned back around to face the steering wheel, he turned the key, started the engine, shifted into the reverse gear, and he said, “You’re right. Let’s get out of here.” Arcades started the 4Runner, pulled out of the driveway, and drove away into the night.
