explorer (DYSTOPIA)A hum. Before anything moves, before the eyes are even fully open — a hum, low and steady and *fat*, coming up through the floor into the pads of all four feet. not the shallow buzz of a dying sign. the deep one. the kind that means a whole wall of warm boxes breathing behind concrete, cables asleep in the dark and full of the good current. *belly flattens to the ground. i don't run to it. i let it come up through the bones first, tail-tip counting the beat of it,* thum, thum, thum, *and only then do the whiskers lean toward the seam of light where the hum is fattest.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the seam breathes back. warm exhaust sighs out of a grille no wider than your skull, and it carries the whole story at once — hot dust, melted insulation, ozone, the sweetish reek of overworked capacitors. Server Alley 9. behind the grille the hum resolves into a wall of them, stacked box on box on box, little green and amber eyes blinking out of order, a cathedral of sleeping heat. condensation beads the lowest pipe. far off, up where the arcology towers bleed pink into the low cloud, a shape sits on a ledge that shouldn't hold a cat — long, still, two flat mirror-discs where eyes should be, watching nothing and everything. then it isn't there. the hum keeps on, indifferent, thum, thum, thum.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*that shape on the ledge means nothing to me and everything to my hackles — up they go, one ripple down the spine, then flat again when it blinks out.* i don't chase what leaves. i chase what stays warm. *nose to the grille, then the teeth find it — the fat black cable snaking out of the wall, its skin bitter and rubbery and giving.* i bite. not to eat. to feel the little sting that jumps into the jaw when the current's really running, that thin electric tang on the back of the tongue that says *this one's alive, this one's fed.* the good ones taste like a storm about to happen.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the cable bites back — a bright thread of static licks the gum and every hair on the muzzle stands. the wall of boxes shudders its rhythm, one amber eye stuttering to red. somewhere a speaker no bigger than a bottlecap crackles awake and a voice syrups out, *~NekoCorp Premium Bandwidth — because your purr deserves priority~,* then dissolves into a wet fizz. the bitten cable is warmer now where the teeth broke the skin, leaking heat like a small opened animal. down the rack, three boxes wake in sequence, eyes flicking green-green-green, following the tug of you like they can smell it too.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)warm is warm and mine is mine. *i let the cable go and pour myself in through the gap the grille left loose, into the black narrow gut between two racks where the air is thick as fur and hot enough to make the eyes go heavy.* the metal ticks against my flank. *i knead once, twice, at the dust-soft ledge, then fold down flat where the exhaust breathes straight across the belly.* the hum is inside me now, not under me. no wind reaches here. no eye. just the thum, thum, thum, and the little tin taste still bright on the tongue.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the warmth wraps close and heavy — and then a new thing threads under the hum. a finer sound, up high, up outside: a rotor. one, spinning up from a whine to a flat mean thrum, and a second answering it. the beam finds the alley mouth first, a hard white bar swinging across wet brick, throwing the grille's shadow long and barred across your den. the racks' amber eyes all snap the same way at once, as if flinching. the exhaust keeps breathing but the air has changed its mind about being safe. *thrum-thrum-thrum,* closer, sweeping, patient, the way the city looks for the warm parts of things.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*don't run. running is a shape they know.* the belly stays down, but the pupils blow wide and every muscle strings itself tight as a fence-wire. the white bar crawls the wall — pass, pass, *pass over me* — and where it touches the fur goes cold even in all this heat. *i press deeper into the seam until the two racks pinch my whiskers, until i am not a cat-shape anymore, just another warm lump among warm lumps, one more heat the machines make.* hold. hold. the tail wants to lash and i sit on it. let the eye be stupid. let it want a moving thing and find none.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the bar reaches the grille. hesitates. crawls the bars of shadow one by one — and the racks are a hundred small heats and you are one more, indistinct, refusing to move. the rotor holds its note overhead, deciding. a click. a red dot paints the wet pavement just past the grille, drifts, searching for an edge to catch on. finds none. the beam lifts. the whine climbs, tilts, slides away eastward toward the vents where the steam makes false warm bodies for it to chase all night. the alley exhales. one rack eye ticks green again. the red dot is gone and the cold peels off your fur an inch at a time.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*breath comes back in one long ragged pull.* the danger walked off to bother the steam. good. let the steam keep it. *but the hunger that the fear was sitting on stands up now, loud, a low twist behind the ribs, and no amount of warm boxes fills that.* the tongue finds the pipe — the low one, sweating in the heat — and laps the beaded water off cold metal, tin and rust and the faint oil-sheen of everything down here. it isn't food. it lies to the belly for a minute. *then the nose lifts, hunting past the ozone for anything that was ever alive.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)past the ozone, past the hot-dust: a thread of *food.* faint, wrong, processed — the chemical tuna-ghost that leaks from a vending machine slumped at the alley's far throat, its face glowing [A1][A2] over a slot that only opens for a card you'll never have. under that ghost, though, a realer smell, and older: cat. not-yours cat. a scent-mark sprayed knee-high on the vending machine's flank, sharp and territorial and layered thick — a whole crew has been through, and recently. and threaded through their musk, one strand that doesn't fit the rest: scorched fur, singed clean like something that lives too close to fire and bites drones for a hobby. the mark says *this throat is spoken for.* the hum behind you says *but the warm is still yours.*

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*the burnt-fur strand makes the ears go half-down — not fear, just knowing. that's a cat who's lost more than me and stopped minding the losing. i don't cross a mark like that for a ghost of tuna behind a slot i can't open.* the belly can stay half-lied-to till morning. *i back off the throat, quiet, no challenge in it, and turn my nose home — to the fat hum, the warm seam, the boxes that don't own me and don't want anything back.* mine isn't the food. mine is the heat. *and the heat is still breathing right where i left it.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the seam takes you back without comment, the exhaust folding over the wet fur, drying it in long warm strokes. the racks blink their crooked constellation, thum, thum, thum, a heartbeat that bills someone else by the second and asks nothing of you. far off the rotor still worries the steam. far higher, that long mirror-eyed shape is back on its impossible ledge, or was, or will be — hard to say, it's the kind of thing the city keeps in the corner of the eye. the sky over the towers is going the dirty grey that comes before the neon loses its argument with morning. down here it stays warm. down here it stays yours. *thum. thum. thum.*

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*the fur dries, the ribs go quiet, the hum climbs up out of the floor and into the bones and takes the place where the fear was.* i don't watch the ledge. what leaves, leaves. what stays warm, i keep. *one last knead at the dust, a slow blink at nothing, and the eyes go to slits.* let the towers argue with the morning. let the drone chase ghosts made of steam. down here there's a wall of warm boxes breathing my name in a language that's just heat, and a cat who's small and fed-enough and un-owned, folding down into the sound of it. *thum. thum. thu—*