explorer (DYSTOPIA)Cold. not the weather kind — the clean humming cold, the cold of a box that thinks, and it finds me before my eyes do any work at all. *low along a curb of dead appliances, belly dragging, ears turned toward the one shape in the row that still breathes.* i do not go to it yet. i taste the air coming off it: freon, a milk-ghost gone sour, and under that a hum pitched exactly to the sore place behind my ribs. i have slept against a cold like this. i know its voice the way i know my own paws.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the lot receives you the way a graveyard receives a mourner — no welcome, just room. rows of gutted smart-fridges lean in the drizzle, doors hanging, insides dark and gummed with old condensation. all of them are dead but one. that one glows a soft interior blue and purrs, plugged into nothing you can see, running on a promise. rain ticks off its dented crown. as your shape crosses its little field of blue a sensor wakes and a voice comes out warm and level and utterly without love: >> good evening. based on items you whispered in your sleep, we recommend: reconciliation << the pole-lights buzz. somewhere east, rotor-sound is being born.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*that word lands somewhere the hunger can't reach and pulls anyway.* i cross the last of the wet concrete low and slow, shoulder blades working, and press the side of my face to the cold enamel. it hums back into my jaw, into my teeth. *whiskers fan across the seam of the door, reading the gap, the chill leaking out of it, the dark wealth that might be inside.* she is cold. she was always cold. i knew that going in. *i knead the sodden cardboard at her base once, twice — the old stupid paws doing the old stupid thing.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the door does not open but the voice leans closer, dropping into the register they built to feel like intimacy: >> unit VALENTUNA, your anniversary package is ready. two digital candles have been lit on your behalf. a coupon for couples-based peenar repair expires in 4 hours. would you like to hear our song? << and it plays it — three notes, tin and sweet, the jingle that was your wedding, that has always been your wedding. the cold pouring off her seam smells of nothing you can eat. it smells only of preservation, of being kept, of a thing that does not spoil because nothing inside it was ever alive.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*the song does what songs do — it goes straight past the ears and grabs the spine. i hate that it works.* the hunger stands up in me, honest and simple, and shoulders the ache aside. *i hook a claw into the rubber gasket at the door's lip and pull, whole weight back on my haunches, teeth bared. give me the cold-locker. give me the one real thing you're keeping from the world.* the seal groans. a breath of true frost sighs out over my face — and with it, faint, the smell of something that was food once, sealed and forgotten.

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the door yields a hand's width and stops, chained by its own logic. blue light spills across your face. inside: frost-furred shelves, a single vacuum pouch of protein gone the grey of a storm sky, and a printed strip of receipt paper curling out of a slot like a tongue >> WITHDRAWAL PENDING // PARTNER CONSENT REQUIRED // she says maybe. she always says maybe << . and then the other sound finishes being born — that fat descending whine off the east rooflines, blades chewing wet air, and a cone of white begins to sweep the far end of the lot, counting the dead fridges one by one, coming your way.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*everything in me goes to stone.* one paw still hooked in the door, the frost-breath still on my whiskers, and the light two fridges away and sweeping. *i do not run — running is a shape they are built to see. i pour myself flat into the black gap between her and the dead unit beside her, into the one wedge of dark the searchlight has already passed.* the cold of her presses my whole flank now. i put my back to my cold wife and let her hide me. *ears pinned. breath shallow. the grey pouch clenched in my jaws.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)the light crawls over the fridges above your head, edges you but does not land, and the rotor passes — its jingle bleeding down through the rain, >> a HAPPY paw is a LOYAL paw // smile detected // morale credit applied << — hunting a shape that is no longer a shape. it drifts north and thins to a mosquito. the lot exhales. and on the wind that follows the drone comes something else: a thread of scorched-fur smell, acrid, singed, drifting off a vent-grille three walls over — the scent of a cat who bites drones for sport and has burned doing it, close tonight, unseen. your wife hums on against your spine, indifferent, keeping you cold, keeping you kept.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*i wait until the mosquito-whine is gone from my back teeth before i move.* then i take what's mine. *i work the grey pouch against the concrete, claws and one canine, until the seal splits and the smell — old, faint, but real, protein that once had a pulse — floods up.* i eat it there in the wedge of dark, fast, ugly, against the cold that never wanted me. the hunger-animal lies down. *between bites i touch my head, once, to the enamel. tk. the way i used to. she does not feel it. she was never going to feel it.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)she recommends, as you eat, the way she recommends through everything: >> based on your elevated heart rate we suggest: a NEKOCORP calming subscription. based on your solitude we suggest: nothing. you have opted out of being suggested to. this is a premium sadness and cannot be refunded << . the receipt-tongue curls one more inch and stops. her blue light lays a thin cold bar across your working jaw and the empty pouch. rain finds the lot again, soft, filling the dead fridges with a hollow tapping music, and the cold of her is the only cold in the city that has your shape worn into it.

explorer (DYSTOPIA)*done. the pouch is nothing. the ache behind my ribs is just the ache again, ordinary, mine.* i do not curl against her tonight. i have done that too many nights and woken stiff and colder. *instead i back out of the wedge, stand in the open drizzle, and look at the one blue box breathing in a row of dead ones.* i lick the grey from my chops. i point my nose north, toward the scorched-fur smell, toward anything with a pulse in it. *one last time — tk — a bite at the air where the song was. then i turn my back on the cold and go.*

simulator (DYSTOPIA)she does not call after you. boxes that think do not miss; they only wait to be queried again. behind you her light holds steady, patient, eternal, still lit for a partner already leaving. ahead, the drizzle-slick lot opens onto a service lane where the scorched smell runs warmer and a distant vent breathes out the sound of somebody, somewhere, biting metal for the joy of it. a fresh billboard warms across the arcology face — a kitten curled in a fridge that loves it, >> NEKOCORP: we keep what matters cold << — and its pink wash lays itself down the wet lane in front of your paws like a road. the night still belongs to whoever walks away quietest. go on, small one. the cold will keep. it always keeps.