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, public social media was the perfect location for hiding something in plain sight - he remembered when he'd first played with the technology as a teen, hiding messages to his closeted boyfriend in memes they'd "innocently" exchanged as "just friends".

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 likely run for hours, even on the large server farm he had available at the hosting facility he was a security consultant for, 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 as nude etiquette required. The server, who Julian knew was a Portland State University graphic arts student on their wrestling team, took his order for a local cider with a carefully orchestrated turn - while few shifters were out of shape due to the metabolism of shifting (the two shifts he'd completed just getting there consumed 2000 calories all by themselves), some were definitely better looking than others and got better tips when they took advantage of it without being obnoxious about it.

Although Julian knew the menu pretty well, he looked it over and decided on a pair of double burgers with all the trimmings - he needed to fuel up for both the shifts coming over, and the ones going back, as well as being his normal dinner. After making his decision, he leaned back and looked around to check out the scene. Although it was late on a mid-week night, there was the usual assortment of bodies hanging out - some who clearly worked out and others not so much, but all had some padding to provide an energy buffer for the expense of shifting. Trying to shift without it was not only difficult, but could be dangerous if there wasn't enough extra fuel for it - the energy had to come from somewhere, and you didn't want it to come from something important to living, though you had to be pretty far gone for that to really be a worry. There were admirable bodies to be sure, but the assortment overall was pretty typical. Then he saw the bartender. The bar hid his lower half, but the top half really caught Julian's eye: sandy blonde, chiseled jaw, not enough padding to hide those pecs, nicely defined biceps, long eyelashes to match the slender fingers pulling taps. He was the total package.

The server came back with Julian's cider and took his burger order, though Julian barely noticed as he watched the bartender competently pull drafts and mix drinks. Occasionally, the bartender would look back and give Julian a quick wink, a smirk, or a seductive wiggle, before moving on to his next order. They silently flirted while Julian ate his meal, but when he finished, he wanted to check on the mysterious message he'd found and headed back to his office.

Chapter 2

Theo Kessler watched as the attractive, mildly furry, guy he'd been flirting with at a distance finished his meal, paid, and walked out. At 30, he had been bartending now for a few years, having decided that he much preferred that to the MBA he'd almost finished, but had only recently moved back to Portland and the job at the Rookery. He'd seen a lot of attractive guys in those years, and slept with many of them, but this one grabbed his attention more than most - enough that his inner deer wanted to come out and show off his rack, despite it being late spring and the rack hadn't grown much yet. He hoped the guy was a regular and would be back, maybe they could explore Forest Park, the Columbia Gorge, and Mt Hood together.

<expand with family drama>

Chapter 3

When Julian got back to his office, to his surprise, the message had been cracked - the sender had barely encrypted the message at all, with a simple "rot13" cipher of all things! The message read:

Rookery test run setup - genetic coding for the deer shifter fag in place. Any predators in the club should take care of him quickly Friday night!

Julian raced back to the Rookery to see if he could find out what the message was talking about - it definitely didn't sound like the test should be allowed to proceed!

When he got there, Theo initially put on a smile, but that quickly changed to a frown when he saw that Julian was agitated. He came out from behind the bar to meet Julian halfway and asked, "What's wrong?"

Julian explained what he'd been doing and showed Theo the message he'd copied onto his phone. Theo paled as he said "*I'm* a deer shifter!" Julian replied, "and I'm an otter - not a big predator, but technically one! Have you noticed anything out of the ordinary recently?"

"Nothing, but I haven't really looked either. Do you think this is real?"

"It doesn't sound like we can take that chance. I don't want to panic your customers, but it's late enough by now that you're about to close, so how about we search the place when they're gone?"

Theo still had to man the bar, so Julian pulled up a stool and nursed a ginger ale until closing time. They found the odd moment here and there to talk about what the message could mean, but they quickly ran out of ideas and ended up talking about their favorite places to spend time in the area - waterfalls in the Gorge, and rivers and lakes in the Cascades for Julian, and trails through the many forests for Theo, both clearly enjoying the natural beauty of the area.

After everyone one else had left, Theo turned all the lights on high and they searched the bar for signs that something had been added that shouldn't be there. Theo checked the office and behind the bar areas, while Julian searched the public areas. It seemed unlikely someone random would have access to the off limits areas, but you never knew...

It didn't take too long for Julian to find a small terrarium mister with a timer sitting at the base of a fake plant at the end of the bar, and the timer was set for 11pm on Friday! He called Theo over, who confirmed that they had no use for a humidifier in Portland, much less one that small - it would only affect a few feet around it. Those few feet included the area where Theo frequently pulled drafts though. Julian disabled the timer while Theo went into the back and got a large zip seal bag. They carefully put the device inside the bag and sealed it so that whatever liquid was in it couldn't escape, then call it a night. Julian carefully took the mister home to keep it safe before going to bed.

The next day, he went over to Priya Adamson, a heron shifter, co-worker, and best friend, and brought her up to speed on what he'd found. She helped him trace network logs to find out who'd posted the hidden message and they found that the source ip address was assigned to a nearby co-working space, with the DNS entry for it pointing to falcon.fulcrumsociety.history.

They decided it was time to get the police involved, so Julian and Theo took the mister and what they knew to the station, where they got handed them over to Detective Elena Osei. A no-nonsense bear shifter, she was skeptical, but agreed to send the mister to the lab to see if there was anything but water in it.

Chapter 4

Meanwhile, with the domain name as a starting point, Julian and Theo started digging into the Fulcrum Society, starting with their website. Theo recalled that his late grandmother Ruth had hated them: his family had a falling out with the other Fulcrum families - the split had been ugly and no one would talk about it. The website home page showed a view of the high end homes lining the Willamette river in the Dunthorpe area, with links to articles about the various families who had been prominent behind-the-scenes movers and shakers for generations. The Kesslers were notably absent.

<Theo discusses family drama, remembers a storage unit he inherited from his grandmother, but had only given it a cursory look as nothing in it looked particularly interesting at the time>

<Julian and Theo go on a date while making plans to investigate the storage unit during the day>

<More encoded messages appear>