Shifting Worlds - Claude Outline

Chapter 1

Julian Mostel leaned back in his chair and sighed - his heart wasn't really in his side project of playing with steganography, the technique of hiding messages in plain sight. His boyfriend of 4 years had found a less geeky and more compliant golden retriever shifter to receive his affections - it wasn't really a surprise: a doberman was just a little to staid for a playful otter and the relationship really hadn't been working. At 32, Julian wasn't really old, but his motto was "I may be getting older, but I refuse to grow up!". It didn't help that the old washable cover on his chair was getting a little threadbare and needed to be replaced - his bare skin deserved something softer and more comfortable. He knew there were some oddballs out there who actually wore clothes regularly, and *liked* it, but like most people, for him, clothes were an uncomfortable nuisance only worn when absolutely necessary. Aside from that, he liked to shift on a whim and didn't want to have to deal with them when doing so.

Spock's voice interrupted his malaise with the classic "Fascinating", which indicated that his program searching for signs of embedded steganography in public social media had found something. He hadn't actually expected to find anything, basically just testing the basic program before turning it loose in more likely locations. Though as he thought about it, pubic social media was the perfect location for hiding something in plain sight.

Looking at what the program had found, he saw a classic picture of Mt Hood as seen from the Rose Garden in Portland, Oregon. He'd been up there many times and new the view well. Julian pulled up a second program that would try a variety of algorithms and passwords to see if it could crack the embedded message (steganographic messages were almost always encrypted as well - the steganography was merely a way of trying to hide the fact that there was a message in the first place). This would run for hours, even on the large server farm he had available at the hosting facility he worked at, and he decided to go grab a bite the Rookery, a gay bar that had decent pub grub off the east end of the Burnside bridge.

As usual, it was raining, so he shifted to his otter form, which didn't care, for the few blocks over to the pub. Just outside, he shook off as much of the water as he could, then shifted and stepped inside where he grabbed a towel from the stack, wiped himself off a bit, found a free table, and sat on the towel.