explorer (DYSTOPIA)Warm here, and the warm has a sound. Not sun-warm — the other kind, the kind that leaks out of the humming wall in one long steady breath against the belly. *flattened low behind the row of ticking boxes, one ear laid flat to the metal, letting the buzz climb up through jaw and teeth* Under the hum, that thin plastic-and-copper smell I chew on when the hunger goes quiet. Home is wherever the wall sings loudest.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the wall sings louder for you than for anything with hands. down in the stacked boxes a green light stutters, then holds, and the breath against your belly deepens — warm pushing out in a slow tide across your flank. overhead a speaker peels awake: NEKO—NEKO—hydration is a lifestyle, lease yours today— the jingle cracks halfway and dribbles off into static. the copper on the air goes sharp. one box in the row has begun to tick faster than its neighbors.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)The fast one is lying. *creeping along the warm seam, whiskers combing the narrow gap between boxes, nose sorting the good copper from the burning copper* A box that ticks quick has a story it wants to finish, and a finished box goes cold, and cold is the enemy of the belly. I set one tooth to the fat cable feeding the loud one — not biting, only tasting the current-hum trapped in the rubber. Mine to guard. Mine to gnaw.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the rubber gives a small rubbery groan under your tooth and the hum in it answers — a thread of signal you feel more than hear, running off past the alley mouth toward the tall dark. the fast box shudders, spits one bright blue spark, and settles. cold creeps into it after all. but the thread you bit into stays live, stays pulling, going out and out and out to wherever the wall's song is born.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)Out and out — the thread pulls like a scent-trail with no animal on the far end. *padding the cable's spine, claws hooked in the tray, the alley's cold wet breath rising up off the drop below* I do not trust a trail that never tires. But the wanting-of-the-source is an itch behind the eyes, the same itch that finds the warmest vent on the coldest night. I follow where the singing gets thicker.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the tray carries you out over the wet, and the wet throws the city back up at you upside down — smeared neon, a red that isn't blood but wants to be. then rotor. low, patient, quartering the air. a flat voice unspools from it as it passes, aimed at no one: bounty adjusted — forty thousand — subject KNIFEBOY — points nonrefundable — and it's gone, dragging its little wind behind it. the cable-thread hums on, unbothered. below and ahead, a slot of orange light where the song runs thickest.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)Rotor-word means nothing and everything at once: not-for-me, so slink. *belly dropped to the cold tray, ears pinned flat until the little wind dies and the red stops smearing across the wet* The name it coughed up leaves a bad electric aftertaste — the taste of every cat the sky has ever wanted. When the sky forgets me again, I move. The orange slot breathes like a mouth: warm air, food-warm, machine-warm, all the warms braided together. I pour down toward it, quiet as spilled oil.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the orange mouth takes you in — heat first, then the smell: hot dust, solder, the sweetish rot of too many machines breathing too close. cats have been here. not now, but the mark is thick — a cheek-smear dragged along the crate corners, older and sharper than yours, something scorched under it like fur that met fire once and never forgot. screens the size of doors flicker with faces that aren't looking at you. one, for half a breath, is a cat's face behind wraparound dark glass — gone before you can be sure it was there.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)Burned-fur cat has been here and left angry in the wood. *crouched in the crate-shadow, one paw lifted, reading the old scorch-mark without touching it, hackles quietly doing the math* Not a threat now — a warning from a stranger to no one, the kind of mark you leave when the leaving mattered more than the staying. I do not answer it; my own cheek stays dry. The glass-eyed face in the screen wasn't hunting. It was already somewhere else, the way the truly quiet ones always are. I keep to the low warm dark and let the den forget me too.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the den obliges — you are small and warm and beneath its notice, which is the safest thing a cat can be. the deepest hum finally shows you its heart: a squat black tower of stacked, breathing boxes, green lights running down its face like rain that fell upward. this is where the wall's song is born. this is the source your bitten thread was always aimed at. it is warmer than any vent, louder than any sky, and it does not care that you are here at all. up top sits one small flat space, cat-sized, sun-warm from the machines below.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)So the trail had an animal on the end of it after all, and the animal is the whole warm wall, breathing. *one long unbroken flow up the stacked boxes, pads reading each green-lit rung, then the fold — chin to paws, spine curled down against the machine's slow heartbeat* Let the sky keep its names and its bounties. Let the burned cat stay angry somewhere else. I have found the loudest warm in the city and made a bed of it, and nothing with rotors knows the way up here. The hum climbs through me until I am part of the song.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the tower takes your small weight without noticing, the way the tide takes a leaf. green rain runs down under your belly, on and on, feeding the wall, feeding the speakers, feeding the sky's patient rotors and the orange mouths and the scorch-marks and every hungry cheek that ever dragged a corner. it will sing all night. it will sing after you. for now the warmth holds you, your ears keep their slow half-turn even folded, and the city goes on being the city — indifferent, enormous, and for this one breath, warm enough. eyes to slits. mine.