explorer (DYSTOPIA)Hunger first. Before the eyes, before anything — a hollow pull low in the belly and, behind it, that other ache, the one that lives under the fur between the ears where the little cold seam was pressed in. it hums when i am hungry. it hums the color of wet copper, and the copper has a taste, and the taste is almost meat. *lying folded on warm concrete in the dark, not moving, letting the empty stomach and the buzzing skull argue it out* the argument is loud today. one ear tips toward a drip somewhere above. drip. drip. each one lands blue.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the dark is a low room and the low room breathes. down here the air is old, filtered so many times it has forgotten what a street smells like — only ozone, dust warmed on humming boxes, and far off the sweetish chemical breath of something that cleans itself all night. the drip you hear falls from a pipe two body-lengths up, and yes, each bead of it carries a faint charge your skull tastes as blue, cold and tinny on the back of the tongue. above the drip: a seam of pale light where a hatch does not quite meet the floor. beyond the hatch, engine-cold air and the wide flat echo of a place where big things sleep in rows. your stomach knows that echo. that is where the two-legs leave crumbs.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*already up, already flowing toward the seam of light before the deciding is done* the copper-hum spikes going up — light does that to the seam under my fur, turns the ache into a thin whine i can almost hear the pitch of. *nose to the gap first, working it, sorting the cold flat air on the other side* engine-metal. old rubber. and under it, faint, the crumb-smell, salt and grease gone stale but real. *one paw hooks the lip of the hatch, testing weight, testing whether the metal will sing when i move it*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the hatch gives with a soft steel groan you feel more than hear, up through the wrist and into the sore seam, and then you are out — belly low on painted concrete, cold as a dead thing under the pads. a vast flat cave of a place: rows and rows of sleeping metal beasts, hunched and dark, their flanks beaded with condensation. overhead a single tube of light stutters, on-off-on, and every time it dies the whole cavern smells briefly of nothing. the crumb-smell is real and it leads left, along a painted yellow line, toward a tall humming box glowing faint against the far pillar. somewhere behind you, small, a rotor spins up and settles again. not close. not yet.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*freezes at the rotor-sound anyway, one paw lifted, ears swiveling back to pin it — behind, low, settled* the stutter-light is the problem. each time it dies my eyes go useless and the skull-hum swells to fill the dark, loud, wet-copper loud, and for one blink i can taste the whole room's electricity like a mouthful of pennies. *waits for the light to catch, then pours forward along the yellow line, low and fast between two sleeping beasts, stopping in the shadow of a tire taller than i am* the humming box is close now. it smells of salt and cold plastic and something sugar-wrong underneath.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the tall box is a wall of little lit windows, and behind each window a bright thing waits on a coil: cans, pouches, a row of soft bricks wrapped in crinkle-skin that throws back the light. it hums at a pitch that sets the seam in your skull ringing in sympathy, and a small speaker in its belly murmurs the same three notes over and over, sweet and dead. a strip of glass near the bottom glows: >> NEKOCORP KIBBLE — TIER MEMBERS ONLY — PURR TO UNLOCK. the sugar-wrong smell is the coil-grease. the real food-smell, the salt and grease you followed, is not in the box at all. it is under it — a torn pouch someone dropped and kicked half beneath the base, out of the light.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*ignores the box entirely — the lit windows mean nothing, the three dead notes mean nothing, the belly has already turned the whole body toward the under-dark where the real smell lives* flat now, cheek dragging cold concrete, one shoulder wedging into the gap beneath the humming base. *paw fishing blind, claws combing grit, hooking crinkle-skin* got it. drag it out slow. the pouch tears wider and the salt-grease breath floods up and the skull-hum drops for one whole breath into something almost like quiet. *crouches over it, eating fast, watching the rows of sleeping beasts the whole time, tail low and still*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the food is old and greasy and perfect, salt-bright on the ruined tongue, and for a moment the cavern narrows to just this: warm mouthful, cold floor, the small wet sounds of your own eating. then the stutter-tube overhead dies again — and this time it stays dead. in the sudden dark the humming box's glow is the only light, and across its face crawls a slow bright bar: >> RESTOCK UNIT INBOUND. from the far end of the cavern, past the last row of sleeping beasts, a single low rotor lifts off the floor and holds, hovering, a red bead of an eye swinging until it finds the box — and the small shape crouched under it. the eye brightens. the rotor's pitch climbs.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*one more gulp — refuses to leave it — then low, flat, backing off the pouch into the black between two beasts as the red eye climbs* the rotor-whine goes through the skull-seam like a wire and the copper-taste floods back doubled, bright enough to blind the nose. *not running yet, running is for when the eye has you — instead pressing into the deepest tire-shadow, one paw silent after another, putting cold metal flanks between me and the red* somewhere in the ringing i catch it: a second scent crossing mine on the concrete, older, scorched, a cat that came through here and left fear behind. i am not the first to hide from this one.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the scorched scent is faint but unmistakable to a nose that knows fear — singed fur, oil, the particular sourness of an animal that has bitten metal and meant it. whoever laid it down went that way, toward a black slot of a stairwell at the cavern's edge, and the trail says they went low and fast and unbothered, like this hunt was an old joke to them. the rotor drifts nearer, methodical, sweeping the gaps between beasts one at a time — its red eye painting each shadow and moving on. two beasts away. its belly-speaker wakes and murmurs, gentle, corporate-sweet: >> please remain visible for your convenience. the stairwell-slot breathes cool air across your whiskers. the scorched trail pools right at its lip, waiting to be followed.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*times it to the sweep — waits for the red to swing off my row, one beat, then breaks for the cool-breathing slot, belly to the floor, following the scorched trail down into the dark* the stairwell smell swallows the rotor-whine and the skull-hum eases and for three whole steps down there is no copper, no red, just cold stone and the fading fear-scent of the scorched cat leading down and down. *pauses on a landing, one ear up the shaft toward the murmuring cavern, one ear down toward wherever the scorched one went* the belly is full. the seam has gone quiet. the down-dark smells of more room to be small in.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)above, the murmur folds shut — >> convenience unfulfilled — and the rotor's whine thins to nothing as the slot's cool throat carries you down out of its reach. the stairwell is old concrete sweating cold, each landing darker than the last, and the scorched trail keeps to the wall, sure-footed, dropping toward a faint under-glow and the deep hum of something much bigger than a vending box. the air changes — wetter, greener, a hundred mingled scents rising up to meet you: rain that has found its way underground, rust, cooked oil, and cat, many cats, a whole territory of them layered scent over scent. the scorched one belongs to it. the trail says come down. the dark says decide. and far below, faint, a single speaker sings three sweet dead notes to no one at all.